Japan finally says goodbye to floppy disks

Japan’s Digital Minister Taro Kono announced late last month that he had successfully repealed 1,034 government regulations requiring the use of disketteKono described the achievement as a victory in the “war against floppy disks,” Reuters reported, although regulations apparently still require their use.

While younger readers may not have seen or heard of floppy disks, it seems downright crazy that the world’s fourth-largest economy still relies on them in more than 1,000 different situations. But it’s been a long road for Kono and Japan, which has announced its intention to get rid of government floppy disks in 2022.

The Japanese government’s attitude toward technology has been notoriously outdated in the past. In 2018, the cybersecurity minister made headlines when he admitted he had never used a computer before. Fortunately, Kono seems to be taking his job more seriously. He has been very open about his plans to ditch floppy disks, and is also committed to cracking down on other old technologies like fax machines.

Despite its reputation as a technological innovator, Japan is also known for its stagnant 1980s bureaucracy, and as this news shows, that’s no exaggeration.

In Japan a few years ago, you had to fill out a paper timesheet and fax it in. The damn thing took four or five minutes to do its job and could break down at any moment, so there was nothing to do but stand there and wait.

That’s how it worked, but the government was forced to realize how ineffective all those paper folders and floppy disks were during the pandemic. That’s when the Digital Agency was created. Given the large number of non-digital bureaucratic processes in Japan, Kono has a lot of work to do.

On the other hand, Japan is not the only government in the world that has just ended its reliance on floppy disks. In 2014, it was revealed that 8-inch floppy disks were still being used for storage in a US Air Force nuclear silo.