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- Use of LGWAN-ASP/The Start of the Third Phase Involving Facility Reservations, etc.[1]
Use of LGWAN-ASP
The Start of the Third Phase Involving Facility Reservations, etc.[1]Miyoshi Town, Saitama Prefecture
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Miyoshi Town has been working to establish IT as part of our overall policies since April 2002. The first phase of this project involved creating databases for all of our duties, and the second phase involved the setup of an information system to act as the base for enforcing computer virus countermeasures, to ensure that all employees had access to their own personal computers, and to set up a LAN within the town hall. We have now arrived at the third phase of the project, which calls for establishing services that are directly connected to electronic applications, the reservation of public facilities and other citizen-based activities. The system at the base of all this is known as LGWAN-ASP. A report on the ways in which Miyoshi Town is making the best use of LGWAN-ASP is provided below.
Miyoshi Town
| ■Location : | Miyoshi Town is located in the central area of southern Saitama Prefecture adjacent to Kawagoe City, Shiki City, Fujimi City and Tokorozawa City. The town hall is located approximately fifteen minutes by car from Mizuhodai Station, Tsuruse Station and Fujimino Station on the Tobu Tojo Line. Flourishing as an agricultural area during the development of new agricultural land in the Edo period, the town is currently a major warehousing base for products transported via the Kanetsu Expressway and a bed-town for the metropolitan area. |
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| ■Area : | 15.3 square km. |
| ■Population: | 36,722 people in 13,983 households (as of January 2007) |
| ■History : | Named Miyoshi Village owing to the merging of Kamitome Village, Kitanagai Village, Fujikubo Village and Chikumazawa Village in 1889, it officially became a town in 1970. Currently operated by the local authorities as a town that does not receive Local Allocation Tax from the central government. |
Installation in all 58 Town Facilities by the End of Fiscal 2007
The sweet potatoes cultivated in Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture, are said to “taste even better than chestnuts.” This ancient phrase was Japan’s earliest example of catch copy, but the truth of the matter is that most of these sweet potatoes were harvested from the fields of Miyoshi. Even today, Miyoshi Town proudly displays the agricultural panoramas of bygone days.
The two cities and two towns of Iruma-Gun—Fujimi City, Kamifukuoka City, Oi Town and Miyoshi Town—established a merger consultation committee in April 2000. However, the citizens of Miyoshi Town, which is operated with independent revenue sources, complained that apart from losing the title of “Gun (county)” in favor of “city,” there were no advantages to an amalgamation whatsoever, and this opposition finally resulted in the amalgamation being rejected. We therefore remain the same town that was amalgamated from four villages back in 1889.
Computer processing was used in the wide area administrative association. However, we decided to entrust all of these functions to an information service company in order to cater to the requirements of computerizing all liaison duties and on-line processing, and we cut over to the LGWAN-ASP system in April 2002. As all operations with regard to this are handled externally, the town hall contains no information system division per se, but all IT-related duties are carried out by our Computer Statistics Section, which is a part of the Planning and Financial Section.
“We therefore have no specialist IT job description. The main duties of our Planning and Financial Section are to promote the advancement of IT incorporation and get involved in all of the adjustment and system design tasks that arise from this, based on the original plans.”
The above is how Mr. Shigeo Yoshino, former manager of the Planning and Financial Section (currently a councilor,) explains the situation. The “Guidelines for IT Promotion in Miyoshi Town,” established by Mr. Yoshino during his tenure in March 2002, have been acclaimed as the “bible” for e-Local Government. These guidelines are updated every year to include reports on project progress and outstanding issues, and they are still used today.
“We are desperate to get an electronic application system up and running…”
Says, Mr. Toshio Hosoya, the assistant manager of the Computer Statistics Section of the Planning and Financial Section, continuing the conversation.
“However, it is impossible to accurately evaluate the cost verses effect performance of such a system when taking the number of Basic Resident Register cards (BRR card) in circulation and their frequency of use in a town like Miyoshi. We therefore began to consider a way in which we could get the residents of Miyoshi accustomed to electronic procedures before we proceeded with development.”
At around that time, in the spring of 2005, an information service company contracted for outsourcing services proposed an ASP-based public facility reservation system.
“However, one of the system requirements was that it was to be aligned with the specifications for the previous reservation system, and it was so difficult to operate that in the end we didn’t use it,” explains, Mr. Hosoya.
In the aftermath of this, we discussed with the information service company how we could modify the system so that it could be used for actual work purposes and came up with some improvements. The result of this was that the Vacancy Referencing system for Miyoshi Town’s Culture Center was put into operation in May 2006, and all of the town’s 58 other facilities were scheduled to install this system by April 2007.
Mr. Hosoya adds, “The term “’public facilities’ encompasses a wide range of buildings with differing purposes, such as culture centers, community centers and gymnasiums, and these have all been rooted in and operated by the local authorities for a long time. To switch all of these across to the ASP service was not an easy thing to do.”
The ASP service is an application package stored in the center’s computer that can be shared for a fixed sum or at a metered rate. Customizing this to individual needs has absolutely no merit for either service providers or users. However, we were still requested to align the service to match up with conditions prevalent during actual use. So, how did we overcome this old issue of using a packaged application and the new issue of customization?
