The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry plans to launch an experiment next fiscal year to promote the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies to streamline the administrative work of local governments, sources said.
The ministry intends to seek proposals from local governments and select about eight pilot municipalities to examine the effectiveness of using such technologies over a two-year period. In preparation for a decrease in the number of employees due to the declining birthrate, the ministry hopes to maintain the level of services even with half the current workforce.
Specifically, AI will be employed experimentally for tasks that are relatively simple but are time-consuming and require manpower, such as the processing of various applications from residents and tax matters. The ministry also plans to use robotic process automation (RPA, see below) designed to automate manual processes. It will examine the accuracy and efficiency of the work done by AI and push for the introduction of successful measures nationwide, according to the sources.
The central government will provide financial assistance to the pilot municipalities. The ministry has included 240 million yen in its budgetary request for fiscal 2019 as related expenses.
Some local governments have successfully streamlined their administrative operations by already introducing AI and other technologies on their own.
In January this year, the Tsukuba city government in Ibaraki Prefecture began employing RPA on a trial basis to process transfer reports related to residents' changes of residence. If identification documents are lacking, a written notification is sent to the person for confirmation.
At the peak moving season in March and April every year, the city government faces an enormous job of sending out documents. It had spent about 85 hours handling the related work every year, but that has been reduced to about 14 hours by taking advantage of RPA for name entry and other tasks.
Other cases include the introduction of AI by the Saitama city government for selecting people who want to put their children in day care facilities and assigning them to certain facilities, as well as a road damage inspection in which the Chiba city government used AI to analyze images.
In Osaka, its city government has launched a system in which residents' questions about applications for services that younger employees have difficulty answering are handled automatically by AI that has learned complicated legal systems and acquired the knowledge of experienced employees.
In 2017, the number of local government employees totaled 2.74 million, down 540,000, or 16.4 percent, from its peak figure of 3.28 million in 1994. According to an estimate by the ministry, this figure is expected to be down 10 to 20 percent in 2040 from the 2013 level. In towns and villages with a population of less than 10,000, the number of employees in general administrative jobs is expected to fall from 62 to 47 on average. Improving the efficiency of operations has become a pressing issue.
-- Robotic process automation (RPA)
A software robot designed to automatically conduct computer operations such as inputting and aggregating data and collecting information on the internet to replace human workers. The technology can reduce simple mistakes that could be caused in human manual processes, as well as the amount of work.
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