The ‘stronghold’ of the floppy disk has collapsed

After two years of “declaring war”, the Japanese government has officially announced a complete end to the use of floppy disks.

On July 3, the Japanese government finally officially announced the elimination of floppy disks in all systems after two decades since the device’s heyday, a long-awaited milestone in the bureaucracy’s modernization campaign.

By mid-last month, Japan’s Digital Agency had repealed all 1,034 regulations governing the use of floppy disks, with the exception of one provision on environmental system management related to vehicle recycling.

The Japanese obsession with floppy disks

Floppy disks used to be the most popular storage medium. Before the era of CDs and DVDs, this product “dominated” the computer market in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States.

Made from a thin and plastic magnet disk, it can hold 1.44 MB of data. For the 7X generation, floppy disks are a symbol of progress in technology.

However, over time, this storage device has since been “killed” in most countries and replaced by more efficient storage solutions. According to statistics, it takes 20,000 floppy disks to be equivalent to a 32 GB memory card.

While users in many countries are switching to newer storage media, until 2022, many administrative agencies in Japan still use floppy disks to store and exchange data.

Until 2022, many administrative agencies in Japan still use floppy disks to store and exchange data. Photo: Boing Boing.

According to Nikkei, the fact that the administrative agencies of the Japanese capital are still clinging to outdated technology shows that the transition to full digitalization is still very difficult.

In 2022, Taro Kono, Japan’s Minister of Digital Affairs, said that about 1,900 Japanese government paperwork still requires the submission of discs, including floppy disks, CDs, and MD (MiniDisc). In addition, there are 157 procedures that require applications in optical discs, magnetic discs, or magnetic tapes.

In December 2021, Mainichi in Japan reported that Tokyo police lost 2 floppy disks, containing information of 38 applications for the social housing program.

The task force in charge of digital affairs in Japan said legal barriers make it difficult to adopt modern technologies such as cloud storage.

Yoichi Ono, head of the Meguro district finance department, said the reason people still use floppy disks is because they “almost never break down and lose data.” In this district, the salary information of officials is still stored on floppy disks, then transferred to banks for transactions.

In 2019, Mizuho Bank accelerated the transition by announcing a fee of 50,000 yen (about $438) per month for customers using physical storage drives, including floppy disks.

The bank said that floppy disks are no longer produced, and the cost of maintaining disk readers are the reasons why they have to charge fees.

The fact that floppy disks are no longer manufactured makes the cost of maintaining disk readers very expensive. Photo: Pexels.

Japan is not the only country that wants to completely eliminate outdated technology. According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Department of Defense only completely removed floppy disks from nuclear control systems in 2019.

Historic victory

Besides being obsolete and expensive, it is worrying that the supply of floppy disks is running out and will one day run out when no one is producing it anymore. Sony, one of the first manufacturers of 3.5-inch drives, stopped selling them in 2010.

“Personally, I think floppy disks should be ‘dead’. It’s a toxic storage medium because floppy disks are basically plastic waste. It’s really something that shouldn’t exist anymore,” said writer and filmmaker Florian Cramer.

When he first took office in early August 2022, the first thing Mr. Kono did was to frankly criticize the use of fax machines and “hanko” seals in paperwork related to the Covid-19 epidemic.

When he was the Minister of Administrative Reform from 2020-2021, Mr. Kono limited the use of fax machines and hanko, but it was not effective.

In a post on Twitter on August 31, 2022, the head of the Japan Digital Agency officially announced a campaign to “declare war” on floppy disks.

Despite the victory, it may be some time before the Japanese government is ready to give up some of the old technology. Photo: Wired.

“We will quickly review the procedures. Where can people buy floppy disks now?” Mr. Kono said at a press conference on August 30.

Despite the victory, according to Ars Technica, it may be some time before the Japanese government is willing to give up some of the old technology.

Specifically, some government officials are said to have opposed the switch to cloud computing for administrative systems. Kono has urged government offices to stop requiring hanko personal seals from 2020, but according to The Japan Times, the transition from seals to electronics is happening at a “slow pace.”

In addition, many workplaces in Japan also choose fax machines instead of emails. Even the plan to remove fax machines from government offices in 2021 was canceled due to opposition.