Progress and Challenges of Civic Tech in Japan

Hal Seki explained the progress and challenges of civic tech in Japan at the presentation in University Tokyo's Civic Tech Design Initiative Kickoff Symposium.

In this presentation, he illustrated the concept of civic tech and ecosystem in Japan through Code for Japan's 11 years activities.

Transcript

1. Progress and Challenges of Civic Tech in Japan Hal Seki, Code for Japan November 1st, 2024 1
2. © Code for Japan Civic Hacker/Founder 
 Hal Seki hal_sk
 Senior Expert
 (Civic Tech)
 Tokyo Metropolitan Government Chief Digital Service Fellow Hamamatsu city Fellow Nishiawakura villege Chief Information Officer
3. © Code for Japan Civic Tech is a global movement transforming government-citizen relationships through technology and community. Civic Tech 
 🏛Collaborate with governments
 👫Facilitate citizen-led projects 
 🛠Create digital public goods/infra
 Foster open government initiatives. 
 - Open data
 - Hackathon w/ govs 
 - join.tw
 
 GovTech solutions 
 - Fellowships
 - Trainings
 - Apps development 
 - Civic user testing 
 Citizen-participation. 
 - Living labs
 - Decidim/vTaiwan 
 - Participatory budget 
 
 Citizen-led projects 
 - Hackathons
 - Brigade programs 
 - Social projects
 - gender equality
 - anti-disinformatin 
 - disaster prevention 
 - regenerative tools 
 Open source from communities 
 - Sovereign tech fund 
 - My society, Decidim 
 
 Open source from governments 
 - Public money, public code 

4. © Code for Japan Japan's Digital Transformation Journey Current Ranking 2024 
 🏆 #1 in UN e-Participation Index 📊 #31 in OECD Digital Govt Index 🌏 #14 in UN e-Government Overall •─────────•─────────•─────────•─────────•─────────•─────────•─── 2013 2015 2016 2020 2021 2022 2024 │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Key milestones 
 MyNumber Law Basic ID Law Open Data Law Digital Society Formation Basic Act. Digital Agency established Digital Garden City Initiative (Smart city) Standardization of local govt systems (in progress) Structure and initiatives 
 • 1,741 cities and 47 prefectures 
 • Various types of legacy systems 
 • Standardize basic operations and rift to cloud services. 
 • Improving citizen services with the MyNumber Card at the core 
 Key challenges 
 • Balancing standardization with local autonomy while maintaining citizen-centric services. • From individual municipal solutions to shared digital public infrastructure. • Addressing digital divide among aging population while accelerating digital services.
5. © Code for Japan Japan's Civic Tech Ecosystem Stakeholders Civic Tech 
 🏛Central Government 
 Digital Agency, MIC, MLIT 
 💼Private Sector 
 Tech companies 
 Social/GovTech Startups 
 Non-profit
 🏢Local Government 
 DX Teams
 CIOs/CDOs
 🎓Academia 
 Universities
 Research Inst.
 • Support through outsourced work 
 • Become a member of the committee 
 • Join research groups 
 • Ask funding
 • Promote open source/open data 
 • Work together
 • Build local community 
 • Become fellows/advisors 
 • Organize events with them (ex. Hackathon) 
 • Provide services (ex. Decidim) 
 • Student Internship 
 • Youth civic engagement 
 • Run citizen-science project 

6. © Code for Japan Code for Japan’s role Vision : Think together, create together 
 🏛Digital democracy
 👫Facilitate citizen-led projects 
 🛠Digital public goods 
 Three pillars of activities 
 Key metrics 
 • 8,200+ Slack Members 
 • 20+ core members (paid staff) 
 • 80+ Brigades
 • Monthly hackathon 
 • Code for Japan Summit 
 • Make our City project 
 • Government hackathon 
 • International collaboration 
 • Anti disinformation tool 
 • Carbon footprint calcurator 
 • Smartcity platform (FIWARE) 
 • Open data workshop 
 • Decidim
 • Digital Citizenship 
 • 11 Years of Activity 
 • Organized 65+ monthly hackathons 
 • Multiple Government Partnerships 

7. © Code for Japan Case study: Decidim Kakogawa city Citizen engagement tools are beginning to be used in a wide range of fields, both in the public and private sectors. 15+ cities uses Decidim 
 Kamaishi city
8. © Code for Japan Offline workshop with citizens 8 Bridging offline activities and online platform.
9. © Code for Japan Case study: Digital public goods
10. © Code for Japan
11. © Code for Japan Many contributions from the world. In the 3 weeks, We’ve got 750 issues and 671 were closed by 224 contributors.
12. © Code for Japan 12 Brigades 80+ regional civic tech communities in Japan
13. Social hack day Choose a project to participate in by referring to the project introduction. We develop, discuss, and present interim reports and results for each project. Project pitch Coworking
14. © Code for Japan 14 Part of the project list
15. © Code for Japan 15 BirdXplorer Challenges • Misinformation threatens democracy • Critical elections worldwide in 2024 • Government action may limit free speech Developed a tool to visualize misinformation on X (formerly Twitter). BirdXplorer • Utilizes data from X's Community Notes • Creates open-source ecosystem • Informs public via dashboard Community Notes X API Database API Dashboard External Research & Development https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2024/ The World Economic Forum has identified disinformation as the greatest risk. Developed the tool with self-funding.
16. © Code for Japan
17. © Code for Japan Technology Evolution 
 • AI governance • Privacy protection • Infrastructure maintenance
 
 Social Innovation 
 • Measuring real social impact • Cross-cultural collaboration • Building trust in digital democracy Challenges Ahead 💰Sustainability & Scale 
 󰠁Technical & Social 
 🌟Impact & Adoption 
 Government Integration 
 • Bureaucratic resistance to open source • Procurement system reform Civic Engagement 
 • Digital literacy gaps • Inclusive participation • Long-term community commitment Funding Models 
 • Current: earn from govt, use it for community • Creating sustainable civic tech ecosystem • Balancing volunteer and professional work
 
 Growth Management 
 • Maintaining quality with scale • Supporting 80+ brigades effectively • Knowledge transfer across projects These challenges present opportunities for innovation and collaboration
18. © Code for Japan Future Trends & Opportunities Digital democracy and AI 
 • LLM for policy discussions
 ◦ Talk to the city, Polis, etc.
 • Enhanced participatory platforms 
 ◦ Better feedback loops, user interface 
 Japan Choice: social opinion map (*2) *1: https://note.com/annotakahiro24/n/ndd21a8ba3eec *2: https://japanchoice.jp/polis/digital *3: https://grants.gitcoin.co/ Digital public goods 2.0 
 • Web3 & public goods
 ◦ Sustainable funding models 
 ◦ Community incentive mechanisms 
 • Cross-border collaboration
 ◦ International standards alignment 
 ◦ Shared infrastructure development 
 Analysis of the Lower House Election by Talk to the City (*1) GitCoin grants (*3)