Japan wins two-year ‘floppy disk war’, removes regulations requiring use of obsolete technology

About two years after the country’s digital minister publicly declared a “war on floppy disks,” Japan will reportedly stop using floppy disks in government systems as of June 28.

According to a Reuters report on Wednesday, the Japanese government “has phased out the use of floppy disks across all its systems.” The report notes that as of mid-June, the Japan Digital Agency (a body created during the COVID-19 pandemic to update government technology) had “removed all 1,034 regulations governing their use, with the exception of an environmental restriction related to vehicle recycling.” This suggests that there is even one government use that could still turn to floppy disks, though further details are not available.

Japan’s digital minister, Taro Kono, who has spearheaded the government’s technology upgrades, has publicly expressed his dislike of floppy disks and other old office equipment, such as fax machines. Kono, who is reportedly considering a second run for president, told Reuters in a statement:

We won the war against floppy disks on June 28!

Although Kono only announced plans to phase out government floppy disks two years ago, it has been 20 years since floppy disks were at their peak and 53 years since they debuted. It was not until January 2024 that the Japanese government stopped requiring physical media, such as floppy disks and CD-ROMs, for 1,900 types of government documents, such as corporate declarations and citizen submission forms.

The timeline may be surprising, considering that the last company to make floppy disks, Sony, stopped doing so in 2011. As a storage medium, floppy disks obviously can’t compete with today’s options, since most floppy disks are no larger than 1.44 MB (2.88 MB disks were also available). And you’ll be hard-pressed to find a modern system that can read floppy disks. There are also some fundamental concerns about the old storage format, such as the Tokyo police reportedly losing a pair of floppy disks containing information on dozens of public housing applicants in 2021.

But Japan isn’t the only government agency that has recently developed ties to the technology. For example, San Francisco’s light rail system uses a train control system that runs on floppy disk software and plans to continue doing so through 2030. The U.S. Air Force used 8-inch floppy disks until 2019.

Outside of the public sector, floppy disks remain common in many industries, including embroidery, cargo airlines, and CNC machines. We recently reported on Chuck E. Cheese’s use of floppy disks for their animatronics in January 2023.

Resistance to Modernization

Now that the Japanese government considers its floppy disk addiction over, eyes are turning to see what further modernization reforms, if any, it will undertake.

Despite its many technological advances, the country has a reputation for clinging to outdated technology. The Institute for Management Development’s (IMD) 2023 Global Digital Competitiveness Rankings ranked Japan 32nd out of 64 economies. The IMD says its rankings measure “the capacity and readiness of 64 economies to embrace and explore digital technologies as a key driver of economic transformation for business, government, and society at large.”

It may be some time before the government is ready to abandon some older technologies. For example, government officials have reportedly resisted migrating to the cloud for administrative systems. Kono urged government offices to stop requiring Hanko personal stamps in 2020, but according to the Japan Times, the seal movement is happening at a “glacial pace.”

In Japan, many workplaces also prefer fax machines to email, and plans in 2021 to remove fax machines from government offices were scrapped due to resistance.

Some believe that Japan’s reliance on older technology stems from the convenience and efficiency associated with analog technology as well as government bureaucracy.