Approaches Made by the Local Governments Business Division

Enhancing the Administrative Efficiency of Local Governments and Strengthening Services for Residents, for the Benefit of Both Local Governments and Their Residents

The Local Governments Business Division offers specialized information services to help promote the welfare of residents through enhancing efficiency in administrative works, in line with one of TKC's business objectives stipulated in its Articles of Incorporation (Article 2, Paragraph 2: "Management of EDP centers for the purposes of improving the administrative efficiency of local governments").

Environment Surrounding Local Governments

With the declining birthrate, aging of the population, and decline in population, and with the trend towards AI, robotics and other new ICT, municipal administration and service to residents are now reaching a major turning point.
The spread of COVID-19 has shed light on the lagging in digitization and moving online in the administrative field. As such, the Japanese government, under the Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management and Reform 2020 (Cabinet Decision of July 2020), positioned all-out promotion of a digital government as a top priority policy issue, and decided to speed up the implementation of digitization initiatives to “move as many administrative procedures as possible online and make them ‘one stop and once only.’”
Also, on December 25, 2020, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications announced the Local Governments Digital Transformation (DX) Promotion Plan, and six legislative bills on digital reform were adopted on May 12, 2021. With these policies, local governments throughout Japan are mandated to standardize and commonize their information systems by March 31, 2026.

National Health Insurance (Assessment) System

Welfare Consultation Support System

Image Management Service

Leading Cloud-based Services Offered by TKC

Over the years, TKC has supported the implementation of optimal business processes at optimal costs in local governments through the development and provision of innovative systems and services utilizing the latest ICT.
Currently, TKC offers the TKC Government Cloud Service to municipalities nationwide, with the TKC Internet Service Center (TISC) as its service base. The number of municipalities using the service has now exceeded 1,000.
The TKC Government Cloud Service consists of the TASK Cloud Service that supports various operations of services to residents and mission-critical and intra-office information systems, and the TASK Outsourcing Services that supports massive batch output and processing of tax papers and other documents.

It has the following benefits:
  1. A single version package system that is designed to allow shared use by multiple institutions
  2. Service fees are charged in the form of fixed rate subscription fees depending on the scale of the municipality
  3. Comprehensive support from system development to data center operation

In particular, the TASK Cloud Service enables municipalities nationwide to share a single packaged system operated at TISC. This feature has drawn attention from the viewpoint of cloud-based services for municipalities promoted by the national government and this service now boasts its largest number of implementation cases in this field. Today, TKC’s mission-critical systems are used by over 160 municipalities including 12 local government cloud (shared use) groups.
In response to environmental changes surrounding local governments, TKC is promoting the following approaches:

Smart Application System

My Number Card Issuance Reservation/Management System

Standardizing and commonizing mission-critical systems

At present, TKC is particularly focusing on strengthening and enhancing mission-critical systems that help optimize work processes at local municipalities. In order to respond to the standardization and commonization of local government information systems, TKC is developing systems that are fully compliant with standard specifications issued by the national government, and promoting support for Gov-Cloud. In November 2021, a joint proposal from Misato Town and Kawajima Town, Saitama Pref., was selected for the Digital Agency of Japan’s Government Cloud Predecessor Project. TKC will work with the two towns on the Project as an application vendor, and thereby be one of the first to deepen its understanding of the standard specifications.

Helping to achieve digitalization of administrative services

TKC was the first private company to pass the LGWAN-ASP Service Connection / Registration Qualification Tests (application and contents services) in 2003. Since then, we have been developing and providing various cloud services utilizing LGWAN, making efforts to promote the use of electronic administrative services. One example is the TASK Cloud Local Taxes Electronic Filing Support Services which TKC provides as authorized service provider of the Local Tax Agency. These services are proposed in collaboration with 50 partner companies nationwide with whom we have on-going alliance partnership agreements, and are currently used by about 780 agencies which account for more than 40% of all prefectures and municipalities.
In order to support the digitalization of administrative services, TKC provides administrative service digitalization support solutions which help governments achieve “no visiting, no waiting, no writing” administrative counter services.
For services that do not require face-to-face processing, TKC provides the TASK Cloud Smart Application System that supports municipalities in moving the full line of administrative processing from application and authorization to payment and issuance to go online. For services that do require face-to-face processing, TKC provides the TASK Cloud Easy Counter Service System. The greatest advantage of these systems is that they are fully compliant with the mission-critical systems, and TKC is proposing the use of such systems through which we could support efforts by customer municipalities to enhance resident services and streamline counter services.
Furthermore, to prevent the delay in the issuance process of My Number Cards on the part of municipalities, TKC was among the first to develop and offer the TASK Cloud My Number Card Issuance Reservation & Management System to support the management operation from reservation to issuance, and its users are expanding nationwide.
We expect that the amendments to legislation will continue on in the future, such as standardization of administrative process and systems to begin with, which will greatly impact the work of local governments. TKC is committed to creating new values that customers appreciate and enhancing support system by creating innovation that utilizes the latest technology, and to helping local governments to achieve “management reform” and “the digitalization of administrative services.”

Support for sustainable administrative management

There is a section in the report by the Study Group on the Promotion of Local Public Accounting (FY2019) released by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in March 2020 that states: “It is believed that smooth implementation of the daily journalizing method and reduction of checking tasks in year-end bulk journalizing can be achieved by implementing a local public accounting system that has an integrated financial accounting system, linking, in advance, the expenditure items with account headings, and by establishing a system that can journalize and convert the budget items automatically upon budget execution. It may also be possible to streamline the ledger registration tasks by linking and integrating the data in the public domain ledger and data in the fixed assets ledger.”
In light of these governmental policies, when updating their systems, we encourage municipalities to consider implementing the TASK Cloud Public Accounting System. It is a financial accounting system integrated with local public accounting systems that is compatible with the daily journalizing method encouraged by the Japanese government. Through the TASK Cloud Public Accounting System and its related systems (the Fixed Assets Management System, Consolidated Financial Statement Preparing System, and Administrative Assessment System), TKC provides support in a one-stop manner for all processes from execution planning, budgeting, closing of accounts, and policy assessments, and thereby assists both the strengthening of administrative management and the realization of efficient and appropriate government finance.
In autumn 2021, TKC started providing the next generation version of its public accounting system. In addition to the appropriate creation and early disclosure of financial documents etc., by visualizing financial conditions and promoting the digital transformation of internal work processes, the next generation system helps strengthen the financial management of customer local municipalities.

Public Accounting System

Administrative Assessment System

Consolidated Financial Statement Preparing System

Easy Counter Service System

Reliable Support Structure for Customers

In an effort to support customers, TKC is engaged in various approaches in addition to offering our systems:

1. Disseminating the latest information
In addition to issuing Kaze (Fresh Air), an information magazine for local governments, we provide varied information that is useful for administrative works at local governments through publications TKC Express and TKC INFORMATION.
2. Adapting to amendments to legislation
The basic policy for design and development of TKC systems is determined based on requests, proposals, and suggestions made by customers in their business practices. This is based on TKC's unique idea of aiming to provide a more optimal system through mutual collaboration between customers being "business professionals", and TKC, an "ICT expert".
In case of the establishment of new legislation or its substantial amendment in particular, the System Research Council is organized inviting administrative staff in municipalities to discuss and study how to respond from the institutional and technical points of view, in order to achieve a smooth transition. TKC, for its part, plays the role of supporting the management of the research council as the organizer, and incorporates the outcomes into the system design and development activities.
3. Organizing Seminars and Workshops
TKC organizes seminars nationwide, covering the latest trends of ICT, establishment and amendment of legislation and administrative management. In addition, we offer individual workshops tailored to various requests from customers.
BasicResidentRegistrationSystem

Various training materials