Japan wins 2-year “war on floppy disks,” kills regulations requiring old tech

About two years after the country’s digital minister publicly declared a “war on floppy discs,” Japan reportedly stopped using floppy disks in governmental systems as of June 28.

Per a Reuters report on Wednesday, Japan's government "eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems." The report notes that by mid-June, Japan's Digital Agency (a body set up during the COVID-19 pandemic and aimed at updating government technology) had "scrapped all 1,034 regulations governing their use, except for one environmental stricture related to vehicle recycling.” That suggests that there's up to one government use that could still turn to floppy disks, though more details weren't available.

Digital Minister Taro Kono, the politician behind the modernization of the Japanese government's tech, has made his distaste for floppy disks and other old office tech, like fax machines, quite public. Kono, who's reportedly considering a second presidential run, told Reuters in a statement today: