Established on September 1, 2021, Japan’s Digital Agency has already taken critical, concrete steps towards creating a basis for much-needed productivity enhancements using digital tools, and embedding Japan more solidly in global IT infrastructure. Located in a brand new, commercial building outside the Kasumigaseki area, the agency began with approximately a third of its 600+ employees from the private sector to create a new organizational and working culture. It selected global IT firms to provide "government cloud" services, aiming to integrate fragmented local and central government IT services. In COVID times, it quickly rolled out a nationwide database and app for confirming the vaccination status of the population and is poised to take on more ambitious goals such as expanding the My Number system toward universal use by the Japanese population. In this conversation, we will hear from former Minister Makishima about how the Digital Agency is spearheading Japan's digital transformation and what challenges might lie ahead.

Panelists

Karen Makishima is a member of the House of Representatives in Japan from the Kanagawa 17th district since 2012. She previously served as the Minister for Digital, Minister in charge of Administrative Reform, Minister of State for Regulatory Reform, and Minister of State in charge of affairs concerning the Cybersecurity Strategic Headquarters. Dr. Makishima is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party and serves as the Deputy Chairperson of the Diet Affairs Committee. She holds a PhD from the Graduate School of International Christian University, an MA from George Washington University, and graduated from the Women’s Campaign School at Yale University.

She previously worked at the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) Washington D.C. Office as a coordinator for documentary programs. Dr. Makishima also authored the book “Seiji wa ‘uta’ ni naru (Politics become ‘song’)”, which hit number 1 sales at Amazon.com under the diplomacy and international relations category (July 28th, 2009).

Discussant

Kenji E. Kushida is Senior Fellow at the Asia Program in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) directing Japan research and programming themed “Innovative Japan, Global Japan” and he leads the Japan-Silicon Valley Innovation Initiative@Carnegie. He is also an International Research Fellow at the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) and nonresident senior fellow at the Tokyo Institute for Policy Studies (TIPS). He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

Kushida’s research streams include Information Technology innovation, Silicon Valley’s economic ecosystem, Japan’s political economic transformation since the 1990s, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He has published several books and numerous articles in each of these streams, including the series “Startup Japan” from Carnegie and journal articles “The Politics of Commoditization in Global ICT Industries,” “Cloud Computing: From Scarcity to Abundance,” and others. His latest business book in Japanese is “The Algorithmic Revolution Disruption: a Silicon Valley Vantage on IoT, Fintech, Cloud, and AI” (Asahi Shimbun Shuppan 2016).

He has appeared in media including The New York Times, Washington Post, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Nikkei Business, NHK, PBS NewsHour, and NPR, and he advises companies and governments.

He is a fellow of the US-Japan Leadership Program, a Trilateral Commission David Rockefeller Fellow alumni, member of the G1 Next Generation Leaders, and a Mansfield Foundation Network for the Future member.

Moderator

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, 2021). 

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace