Who Are the Pilot Projects For?

Semboku City was designated a National Strategic Special Zone in 2015. Since then a good many things have been done here.

A pilot project delivering library books by drone in 2016. A pilot project carrying farm produce by drone in 2019. Another pilot project carrying farm produce by drone the following year. Besides those, public road trials of a driverless bus, joint trials of autonomous driving, disease prediction for agriculture using sensors and AI, and a study tracking visitor movement at tourist sites using Wi-Fi.

Let me be honest as an ordinary resident: I have never once felt that my life improved because of any of these.

In the past my pen would have stopped there. Saying I have not felt anything is, after all, one man's impression.

But when I looked into it, the city had been asking the same question. And five years of answers had been published.

FIVE YEARS OF ANSWERS

Semboku City runs a citizen opinion survey every year. It lists policies one by one and asks residents whether they are satisfied. The results are all on the website.

Fiscal 2021. That year the method averaged five-point scores, with 3.00 as the midpoint.

    Promotion of near-future technology trials and implementation    2.83
    Industrial promotion using the special zone                      2.86
    Promotion of advanced information technology                     2.91

All three fall below the midpoint. The city graded all three as C. C means "importance of 3.00 or above but satisfaction below 3.00" - that is, considered important yet not satisfying.

After that the policy names change repeatedly. In fiscal 2023 a new item appeared: "Promotion of regional revitalization through regional DX and internal government DX." Satisfaction 10.3 percent against dissatisfaction 22.5 percent. "Do not know" accounted for 57.6 percent.

From fiscal 2024 it carries a longer name: "Promotion of migration and settlement, response to diverse lifestyles, and promotion of near-future technology trials and implementation."

    Fiscal 2024    satisfaction 17.4 percent    dissatisfaction 48.7 percent
    Fiscal 2025    satisfaction 18.3 percent    dissatisfaction 51.9 percent

And of the forty-three policies surveyed in fiscal 2024, this item had the highest dissatisfaction of all. In fiscal 2025 the list grew to fifty-six policies, and this item again had the highest dissatisfaction of all.

Last place among all policies, two years running.

The names keep changing. The residents' answer has not changed in five years.

ONE POINT SIX PERCENT

One more question was added to the fiscal 2025 survey.

Semboku City offers a personal health record app called the Health DX Notebook. Asked whether they use it, residents answered:

    Using the city's Health DX Notebook          1.6 percent
    Using a health app from a private company    6.3 percent
    Not using any                                92.1 percent

And those not using any were asked whether they would like to use the city's app in future. Twenty-two percent said they would. Seventy-eight percent said they had no intention of doing so.

Out of more than a thousand respondents, that works out to roughly eighteen users.

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN

Before getting angry, I did some reading. I think I now understand roughly why.

Most projects of this kind run on national government grants. Those grants come with a menu of eligible activities and with deadlines.

So the order gets reversed. It ought to be "there is a problem in the region, therefore we look for a solution." In practice it becomes "there is a grant menu and a deadline, therefore we assemble a project that fits it." The money comes first, not the problem.

On top of that, the shortage of staff who understand digital technology in local government is openly acknowledged as a problem in the national government's own documents. For a city the size of Semboku, keeping several specialist engineers on the payroll is not realistic. Which leaves entrusting the work to a company that arrives with a ready-made system.

The tool gets decided before the purpose does.

And when a trial ends, a report remains. A track record remains. That becomes material for the next application. Round and round it goes. And while it goes round, nothing in my daily life changes.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY FOR WHOM

The fiscal 2024 survey contains this question.

"Is there anyone in your household who does not own a smartphone?"

Households answering that there is: 49.9 percent. Half. And of those without a smartphone, 72.5 percent were aged seventy or over.

As for the city's official messaging account, 48.2 percent of residents were registered in fiscal 2025 and 50.4 percent were not.

Half the households contain someone without a smartphone. Half the residents are not registered for the city's messaging service. And in that situation, apps are being distributed and DX is being pushed forward.

Four in ten respondents are seventy or older, and nine in ten have lived here more than twenty years. Is any of this designed for them?

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT

In fairness, let me set down the counterargument.

In a town where the population, the staff, and the tax revenue are all shrinking, one can argue that you have to keep taking action even if some of it is wasted. Do nothing and nothing will certainly happen, so you swing even when you do not know whether you will connect.

A pilot project is by its nature an undertaking that includes failure. Punish people for failing and nobody will try anything new. That is also true.

It is also true that a new system takes time to take root, and that few people use it at first. That is only natural.

But this is five years.

2.83 in fiscal 2021. Bottom of fifty-six policies with 51.9 percent dissatisfaction in fiscal 2025. In all that time the residents' verdict has not once turned upward. To call that a matter of time is stretching it.

CLOSING

I am not saying the trials should stop.

I want to say one thing only. For five years, residents have returned the same answer. Those are figures the city collected itself and published itself. This is not criticism carried in from outside.

Has the city read its own answers?

If it has read them and still judged that this is the right direction, then say so. What worked, what did not, and therefore what will be done differently next time. Given that, I could accept it, and I could support it.

If it has not read them, the matter is simple. Read them first. Five years of it sit on the city website exactly as they are.

[Note on dates: Japanese fiscal years run from April to March. Reiwa 3 through Reiwa 7 have been rendered here as fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2025.]
[Note: "DX" is the term used in Japan for digital transformation and appears throughout the city's own documents.]