Enabling Citizen-centric policy making in Japan

Abstract

Administrative bodies including government and local governments in Japan seek for building citizen-centric policies and plans, in regards with efficient allocation of various resources as well as for accountability to the citizens. Large scale surveys to achieve evidence of users' satisfaction and research symposium organized entitles “For human-oriented system design” are the examples for their intentions. But the accumulation of experience and human resources in Human-centered design (HCD) approaches does not seem to be fully utilized. In this study, examples of administrative planning processes in Japan such as e-government, road administration of government, ITS projects (intelligent transportation system) are first reviewed to reveal the needs for HCD. Then the contribution of HCD approaches to these examples is discussed focusing on enabling citizen-centric policies and plans. The necessity and possibility of broadening conventional HCD activities to these fields is further discussed.