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- The Establishment of a Simple, Inexpensive and Secure Environment that Receives the Approval our Citizens[1]
The Establishment of a Simple, Inexpensive and Secure Environment that Receives the Approval our Citizens[1]
Kimino Town, Wakayama Prefecture
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Kimino Town was established through the amalgamation of two towns in January 2006. Blessed with an environment rich in nature, the percentage of senior citizens (citizens of 65 years and older) in the town exceeds thirty percent. Amid tight financial conditions, the first thing at which we directed our attention with regard to digitalizing administrative duties was the creation of a secure network. We wanted it to be simple, inexpensive and long-lasting, and to perform all of the daily tasks required of it as efficiently as possible in order to meet our responsibilities to the citizenry.
Kimino Town
| ■Location : | Located in the northern part of Wakayama Prefecture and consisting of hilly and mountainous terrain spreading alongside the River Kishi, which is a main tributary of the River Kino. Location of the Misato Observatory, which boasts one of the world’s largest Cassegrain reflector-lens telescopes. |
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| ■Area : | 128.31 sq. km. |
| ■Population: | 11,795 people in 4,684 households (as of December 2006) |
| ■History : | Established on January 1st, 2006, as a part of the Great Merger of the Heisei Era after half a century under the two different names of Nokami Town, which was established in April 1955, and Misato Town, which was established in June of the same year; both of which came into being through the Great Merger of the Showa Era. The new town was inaugurated under the name of Kimino Town. |
Enactment of Security Policies Participated in by a NPO
Kimino Town, which is located in the northern part of Wakayama Prefecture, is one of the few towns in Japan that is known for its beautiful night sky. The Misato Observatory (formally in Misato Town,) which is open to the public and equipped with one of the world’s largest Cassegrain 105cm reflector-lens telescopes, is located on the peak of Matsugamine Point at 430m above sea level and is a very popular destination owing to its night-sky tours led by experts.
One of the reasons why the stars can be seen so clearly is because there are so few lights in the vicinity to hinder night-sky observations. In other words, the area is not especially known for its bustling economic activities. The population of the town has been dropping steadily ever since the Nokami Railroad, which linked the town to Kainan City in the west and to hiking courses that led to the Oishi Highlands, was abolished at the end of the 1990s. The two towns were therefore amalgamated under the cloud of deteriorating financial conditions, the problems of maintaining administrative efficiency that these conditions generated, and the additional problem of the ageing of society.
Neither of the former towns was equipped with leading-edge network systems for administrative purposes. The former Misato Town installed an optical fiber network when the observatory was opened in 1995, but this was mostly used to provide information on the area and mainly focused on the observatory itself. Mr. Hideaki Tanaka, the Assistant Manager of the Kimino Town General Affairs Department who was assigned to the former Misato Town Information Center, says, “Priority was placed on getting all workers to carry out their duties with the use of the Internet, and although we implemented measures to improve security, it wasn’t all that it could have been. The duties involved in issuing family registers and all of the other main duties were carried out without the use of computers, and although we installed a client / server system in 2002, the town hall continued to operate on a closed system.”
The other town involved in the amalgamation, Nokami Town, also installed a client / server system in 1998, but all of the main duties were carried out in accordance with a system that was not linked to the external network, and the system was freely used as a preparatory step towards using the Internet for administrative purposes. In other words, the issue of security was given a much lower priority.
This was to change dramatically once the two towns amalgamated. It was decided that a new trunk system was to replace the old systems as a part of the measures to integrate operations. This naturally meant that we had to redesign the network from the ground up, and this led to the necessity of security being approached in an appropriate manner. However, the method employed for this differed slightly to the methods adopted by other local authorities.
The Shirahama Cyber Crime Symposium has been held in Wakayama Prefecture since 1997, and in the year 2002 the organizing committee of this symposium established the Research Institute of Information Security as a non-profit organization (NPO). The Wakayama Security Measures Council was set up as part of the security measures enacted for local authorities that come under the jurisdiction of the prefecture, and the Research Institute of Information Security became involved in the operation of this Council and in supporting the local authorities. Wakayama Prefecture is commonly goaded for coming 46th out of 47 prefectures in the country with regards to policy implementation, but we came top in the country for enacting these security policies that covered 100 percent of all local authorities under prefectural jurisdiction. Despite our respective backgrounds, we formulated an amalgamation between Nokami Town and Misato Town that involved the participation of an NPO in the establishment of our new network.
