Information Barriers and Social Welfare Services

: A Case Study of a Municipal Government in Japan

Abstract

This paper describes the problem of barriers to obtaining information on social welfare services in Japan. Barriers to the effective utilization of social welfare services often result from the inadequate dissemination of information about them. These barriers have been investigated using a questionnaire and interviews of public employees in the areas of long―term care, childcare support, and public relations of a municipal government, along with a study of the municipal government’s website. The following results were obtained : 1） The municipal government places a high priority on improving hard measures used to convey information rather than soft measures such as better dissemination of the information itself. 2） The public employees of the municipal government were not fully aware of the gaps between the information required by citizens and the information actually disseminated, primarily because of cognitive bias and the lack of monitoring systems to detect such gaps. To make public employees more aware of these gaps and responsive to citizens’ need for information about social welfare services, it is necessary to be aware of the gaps and review the division of tasks systematically.