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IT budget of the order of 600 billion yen(budget draft by Ministry of Finance). But it really is a thin veneer. |
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Unclear |
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Cabinet headed by the prime minister Yoshiro Mori announced that the budget for IT (Information Technology) would be over 600 billion yen, which accounted 0.7% of the total budget for fiscal 2001. The IT budget is much lower than road work budget (2,500 billion yen) but is outstrips budgets for ports and harbors (350 billion) or airport (160 billion). However it seems to be just a provisional aggregation from other ministry departments that has done summer. Although expressing of establishment base for an advanced information network society, it lacks substances but just changes the name. While items are cut off in the deteriorating economy, only IT budget on anti-public works shows about 60% increase over last year. In truth, IT budget is not solid and just a bundle of stocked items for computer-related operation provided to the Finance Ministry by other ministries because that works the most to get the budget plan pass. The General Agriculture Information Station concept by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan can be taken as an example. It requested billion yen and was granted 41 million yen to set up a "Box" with computer server from which the information data and maps of farming villages can be pulled out. At the new fiscal year, they planed to set a few more of them. Cadres of the ministry confided that they screwed out the concept as required by the office of Prime minister. Main features of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry are IT seminars, Web site creation, practice and training of e-commerce. CEOs of medium and small companies say most information in seminars, website, and training are not enough. Cadres of Finance Ministry told that they just admit any public project under the pretext of IT despite of public criticism. Until last year, IT sector budget was mostly to induce the business investment among nongovernmental enterprises. From this year however, in many cases country invests in subject business directly. For example, a plan by the Ministry of Construction was accepted, which is to build a fiber-optic groove when lying national highways and sewer within the budget for public works. This sounds effective but has pitfalls. Compared to metropolis, the need of fiber optics is much less in local regions where those grooves are left unused. Source: Asahi |
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