Abolition of Floppy Disk Usage Requirement Regulation
1033 out of 1034 Cases Abolished
Japan Reviewing Overall Analog Regulations
The floppy disk, a symbol of analog storage media, has completely disappeared from global history. With the Japanese government, which was virtually the only user, abolishing regulations requiring the use of floppy disks, it is expected that floppy disks will no longer be found in Japan either.
According to local foreign media including Mainichi Shimbun on the 20th, Taro Kono, Japan's Minister in charge of Digital Affairs, recently announced that regulations requiring the use of floppy disks in government administrative procedures will be completely abolished by the end of this month. Of the 1,034 provisions that specified submitting or preserving data on floppy disks, all have been abolished except for one under the Ministry of the Environment, which is currently undergoing a revision process of enforcement ordinances. Once this last provision is abolished by the end of this month, procedures requiring the use of floppy disks will disappear entirely.
Floppy disks enjoyed their heyday as PC storage devices until the 1990s. However, since the 2000s, with the emergence of CDs and other media that compensated for the small capacity (1.44MB) and improved efficiency, floppy disks gradually began to vanish. According to the Japan Storage Media Industry Association, global sales of floppy disks in 2006 were 700 million units, a two-thirds decrease from the peak of 2 billion units in 1998.
Domestic companies such as Samsung Electro-Mechanics, which produced floppy disks, also stopped production after the 2000s, and even Sony, the last manufacturer, ceased operation of its production line in March 2011, resulting in nearly 15 years without new production.
Although production has already stopped, Japan still required the submission of materials or data storage using floppy disks. This caused inconvenience for companies that had to submit materials to government offices for administrative processing, as floppy disks were difficult to obtain. Currently, the only way to acquire floppy disks is to purchase stock produced 15 years ago. Japan’s analog-centered culture, where employees had to go to the office to stamp documents even amid the spread of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, became a global topic of discussion.
The Japanese government is currently reviewing analog regulations overall, including the requirement to use floppy disks and mandatory employee residency. It is reported that about 70% of the regulations, including those handled by law and those based on official notices, have already been reviewed.
Minister Kono declared upon his appointment in August 2022 that he would break away from outdated practices using old storage media such as paper, fax, and floppy disks, and accelerate administrative digital transformation. Since then, through social networking services (SNS), he strongly expressed his determination to phase out floppy disks by declaring "war on floppy disks."
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