Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks

[sl8]

"We have won the war on floppy disks on June 28!"

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-declares-victory-effort-end-government-use-floppy-disks-2024-07-03/

Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks

By Rocky Swift
July 3, 2024 3:24 AM EDT Updated 2 hours ago

TOKYO, July 3 (Reuters) - Japan's government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, two decades since their heyday, reaching a long-awaited milestone in a campaign to modernise the bureaucracy.

By the middle of last month, the Digital Agency had scrapped all 1,034 regulations governing their use, except for one environmental stricture related to vehicle recycling.

"We have won the war on floppy disks on June 28!" Digital Minister Taro Kono, who has been vocal about wiping out fax machines and other analogue technology in government, told Reuters in a statement on Wednesday.

The Digital Agency was set up during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, when a scramble to roll out nationwide testing and vaccination revealed that the government still relied on paper filing and outdated technology.

[...]

[Girard442]

1. Well, it's not Godzilla, bit it's something.

[Voltaire2]

2. Finally!

I would frequently wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night having nightmares about office workers in Japan desperately searching for the floppy disk reader on their pc.

No more.

[hunter]

3. Sigh. The first 3.5 inch floppy drive I bought made me feel like Star Trek.

I've still got it around somewhere, packed away with the 8 and 5 1/4 inch floppy drives I'd previously used.