Local governments play a vital role in protecting the lives and social infrastructure of local residents, providing not only infrastructure for daily life, transportation, and crime prevention, but also enhancing resident welfare and revitalizing local industries. They are constantly being called upon to comply with new legislation and improve the quality of their services. The "Number System," launched in January 2016, adopted a mechanism for exchanging data between the national government and local governments, and among local governments, via an intermediate server. This forced each local government to build a core system that centrally coordinates information from various business systems. One example of this is the "GPRIME Common Platform System" (hereafter, "Common Platform System") provided by NEC Corporation (hereafter, NEC). DataMagic was adopted as a data conversion tool (converting and processing data to conform to the national regional information platform). We spoke with four NEC employees involved in the planning, development, and maintenance of the Common Platform System about their reasons for adopting DataMagic.
Customer Issues
We want to contribute to reducing the TCO of our customers (local governments) by creating a common platform system that pursues standardization (openness) and simple functionality.
Benefits of implementation
High quality
data integration function
Quick implementation
By adopting standard technology
Multi-vendor environment
Achieve
Easy to renovate
Customer
Contributes to reducing TCO
Developing a common platform system based on the themes of "standardization," "simple," and "low cost"
NEC provides a variety of solutions to over 1,470 local governments (local public organizations) across the country. Local government business systems can be broadly divided into two categories: resident information business systems, which mainly contain personal information, and internal information business systems used for internal affairs. Until now, each system has been developed and operated individually, optimizing it for each different task (resident records, taxes, welfare, etc.). "Authentication and operational functions were different depending on the business system, making integrated operation difficult. Therefore, in order to achieve optimization across the entire local government business, we developed a common platform system that aggregates common functions and proposes a system that operates in conjunction with each business system," says Tadamori Shimada of NEC.
Mr. Tadamori Shimada, Chief of Public System Development Headquarters
The primary purpose of local governments adopting common infrastructure systems is to reduce costs by consolidating functions that are common across business systems. There is no longer a need to create similar functions for each business system, and consolidation can significantly reduce operational and future repair costs. Another important objective is standardization. "In core cities with populations of over 300,000 that previously used large general-purpose computers, operational and maintenance costs tended to remain high due to vendor lock-in, but with the introduction of the number system and other factors, upgrading to an open system has become the default course of action. As this ultimately leads to a reduction in TCO, the computer department requested that the system be made 'a de facto standard so that any vendor can use it!'" (Shimada Tadamori)
NEC's common platform system provides functions such as authentication, collaboration, integrated database, and integrated operation, and thoroughly pursues de facto standards, such as adopting Oracle as the database. In this context, DataMagic was adopted as the data conversion tool required for linking business systems with the common platform system.
It is in line with the standardization concept,
Adopting DataMagic, which is easy to implement, for the common infrastructure system
The integrated database of the common infrastructure system collects copies of data from each business system, but this data needs to be converted into a data format specified by the government (compliant with the Regional Information Platform) before being sent to an intermediate server, where DataMagic 's data conversion function is used.
Masahiro Uesako, Project Director, Public System Development Headquarters
Furthermore, when residents move in or out, data is first registered in the resident record system, which is then passed on to the tax and national health insurance systems, and this data needs to be processed and converted in conjunction with the business flow, and here too it is incorporated and used as one job in a series of job flows. "We were looking for a good tool in the early stages of developing the common platform system and came across DataMagic. It uses standard technology and fits the concept of a de facto standard, and we chose it because it allows easy implementation of format conversion, character code conversion, and business code conversion, can detect data errors in formats and business codes, operates stably 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and is low-cost," says Uesako Masahiro.
We would like to pool our wisdom together to respond to new demands for data integration
Seiichi Kai, Chief of Public System Development Headquarters
Kai Seiichi also says that DataMagic offers significant benefits in the operation and maintenance phase. "By consolidating conversion functions into a common platform system, each customer's business can build a system that is easy for them to use, without having to worry about linkage functions. NEC's operations engineers only need to remember this one system, and even when settings need to be changed due to legal revisions, there is no need to meet with the business side and create them separately, so the process can be handled easily and in a short space of time." In addition, Kai says that they highly value the fact that DataMagic 's GUI makes it easy to change and adapt to data specifications that differ depending on the local government.
Some time has passed since the number system was launched, and the situation has settled down to the point where revisions are only made annually. However, because the common infrastructure system controls the basic technologies of the entire system, including business systems, it is now possible to quickly and centrally verify upgrades to Oracle and Windows, for example.
Public Solutions Division
Tomoaki Hirayama, Senior Expert, Business Promotion Group
As the system handles personal information about residents, it is a common infrastructure system that is operated on-premise or in a private cloud environment that is disconnected from the internet, but in the future it is also envisaged that only the input portion of the various application procedures that was previously done on paper will be moved to the public cloud. "The upper business systems are evolving every day, and in many cases, when reviewing business systems every five to ten years, customers will want to consider the lower infrastructure as well. We believe that in the future customer needs will shift towards further standardisation of operations and the promotion of digital government. We expect new requests to arise for data integration achieved by DataMagic, and we would like to brainstorm together with Saison Information Systems (now Saison Technology) to provide ICT services that will be even more useful to local governments," says Hirayama Tomoaki.
Image of the GPRIME common platform system
NEC Corporation
Toward the realization of a sustainable society, we utilize the power of ICT to solve our customers' challenges and the societal challenges that lie beyond them, and continue to provide value such as "safety, security, efficiency, and fairness." Our Public Solutions Division and Public System Development Headquarters are working together to develop a variety of solutions for local governments.
- The content of this case study is current as of the time of the interview. The content of this case study may change without notice.