Japan’s government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks, the the 1990s relic that, while rarely seen today, remains fondly remembered for its 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch formats, the latter of which can store 1.44 megabytes of data. Taro Kono, the country’s Digital Minister, confirmed the news this week, telling one outlet that Japan had “won the war on floppy disks on June 28.”
From a report:
- “Japan’s government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, two decades since their heyday, reaching a long-awaited milestone in a campaign to modernise the bureaucracy.”
- “By the middle of last month, the Digital Agency had scrapped all 1,034 regulations governing their use, except for one environmental stricture related to vehicle recycling.”
- “The Digital Agency was set up during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, when a scramble to roll out nationwide testing and vaccination revealed that the government still relied on paper filing and outdated technology.”
Kono highlighting the news on X:
Everyone loves floppy discs. https://t.co/lm2LmRSxBN
— KONO Taro (@konotaromp) July 3, 2024
Reuters added:
Japan’s digitisation effort has run into numerous snags, however. A contact-tracing app flopped during the pandemic and adoption of the government’s My Number digital identification card has been slower than it hoped, amid repeated data mishaps.