The country of technological innovation par excellence has decided that it is time to abandon floppy disks, an ancient system of information storage that many of our readers have probably only seen in movies and TV series. In 2022, the Japanese government acknowledges that they are still necessary for successful implementation more than 1900 bureaucratic procedures.

The country’s newly appointed Digital Minister Taro Kono he expressed a few days ago on Twitter the need to abandon “old-fashioned” technologies such as floppy disks, CDs or MiniDiscs. Among the commitments is also the removal of tools such as the fax machine or the hanko, a carved red seal that is still necessary as a signature on official documents.

Kono’s announcement comes in the context of the country realizing the need to modernize the way residents relate to governance in their daily lives, with the aim of eliminate inefficiencies and errors and save time and cost. It is surprising to say the least that a country with Japan’s rate of technology adoption is so far behind others when it comes to digitization.

Opinions aside, there is a good reason to abandon floppy disks: Sony, one of the main manufacturers, stopped making them more than 11 years ago, and most manufacturers followed suit. Thousands of organizations first bet on USB storage and then for cloudbut there are legal and bureaucratic hurdles that must be cleared before the entire administration is ready to jump.

Japan is no exception. Until a few years ago, the US used floppy disks to store its nuclear program, and although it was an outdated medium, those in charge of the armed forces defended its continuity due to its resistance to hackers compared to modern cloud systems.

In Spain, public institutions began to abandon floppy disks after they were withdrawn from the market in 2011, and it is fair to say that digital administration it has made a lot of progress in recent years, although there is also a lot of work ahead.