Keidanren Proposes Establishment of Digital Ministry

May 14, 2018

Tokyo- The Japan Business Federation, or Keidanren, on Monday called on the government to establish a new ministry that takes charge of information technology and digital economy policy issues in a unified manner.

Matters related to IT and digital economy policies are currently handled by a range of government entities, including the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

With the global economy increasingly going digital, the nation's biggest business lobby apparently believes that Japan needs to speed up work on integrating digital economy-related administration into a single ministry so that it can lead the international efforts to establish common rules in the field.

The National Strategy Office of Information and Communication Technology, created at the Cabinet Secretariat as a control tower for IT issues, has failed to exercise leadership for policy implementation, due to its limited budget authority, Keidanren noted.

Keidanren also criticized the current inefficient IT-related administration, saying, "Different concepts are proposed by different entities, and strategies are not well-coordinated." Jiji Press