Tuesday, September 6th 2022
Japanese Government Ends its Floppy and CD-ROM Obsession in the Age of Online Forms
Ever wondered why optical disc drives and floppy drives are still a thing in Japan? Turns out that government forms require Japanese citizens and businesses to mail in their data (forms, electronic attachments, etc.,) in physical media such as floppy disks, CD-ROMs, or MD cards (a floptical memory card)! They could also submit USB flash drives, but why would you give away a $5 flash drive when you could keep an optical- or floppy drive handy for when you have any business with your government? Rather use cheaper consumable storage media? Sharing information with the government over the Internet is forbidden for security reasons. Japan is finally changing this policy. Under the new policy, every citizen gets a unique identification number, called MyNumber, and can fill up online forms. Electronic attachments can finally be securely uploaded to an online database.
Source:
TechARP
34 Comments on Japanese Government Ends its Floppy and CD-ROM Obsession in the Age of Online Forms
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Point is, those things like using floppy disks or CD-ROMs are just the tip of the iceberg there, there are a lot of vintage tech that they still use broadly...