To contribute to arguments about public value based on the global open data movement, I describe its definition, purpose, history, meaning, and examples from within Japan and abroad. Behind the movement, there are cultures of “open” and “share” applied via the internet. Implementing policies passively based on the traditional “closed” culture, the government cannot develop the ability to enable open data. We need to think deeply and hold more discussions about the essential value of “open access,” which enabled and continues to promote the information society. Thinking more about the value of “open access” will improve open data utilization and therefore enhance business growth and social problem-solving.

This paper analyzes the features and issues of current “open data” politics in Japan. Open data in Japan is not highly evaluated by the global community. Why doesn't the concept of open data work in this country? One basic reason is the lack of political and business context. By reviewing open data politics in Japan, this paper points out the lack of specific political power that promotes open data and rational economical requests. This is because the government has already allowed the disclosure of information in Japan. The “Act on Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs” was legislated in the late 1990s, and administrative information was recently made widely available through the internet in Japan. With this background, this paper tries to apply open data as a platform that connects private and public sectors.

The government of Japan is currently implementing several measures to promote open data. Also, specific efforts are being carried out in the field of official statistics to ensure open data usage. In this article, I outline and describe the efforts to disseminate open data of both the government and official statistics.

The movement of offering new services based on incorporating open data is becoming prevalent. In the past, a database was constructed and held within an individual organization without disclosure, inhibiting wide scale data usage. Third parties found it difficult to use data to provide a new service. However, by disclosing data in a format available for secondary usage, such data becomes “open data,” with the potential of broadening new horizons. Data access enables innovative development at individual and organizational levels. This article first shows prior studies regarding the macroeconomic impact of an open data policy, including the latest economic simulation of the macro economic impact of publicly owned data in Japan. Secondly, it explains three factors that will affect innovative use of open data related to business or government; Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain technology. The author intends to provide some additional viewpoints showing economic possibilities of publicly owned data and government policies.

Cyberspace is rapidly changing based on the development of Big data, Open data, Cloud and My number (BOCM). While these developments help expand freedom, they are also bringing the serious problems of security and protection of privacy to the forefront. These three issues are apt to contradict each other. Thus, our society is in urgent need of 3 (drei) Aufheben. To achieve this Drei Aufheben, cooperation of Management, Ethics, Law and Technology (MELT up) is essential. We will consider this problem with concrete experiments applying an organizational encryption system which we recently developed for local governments and medical organizations. Experiments were conducted in the local governments of Nagano, Nigata, Hyogo and Oita prefectures and a medical institution in Kyoto prefecture. Finally, in order to sharply reduce advanced and persistent cyberattacks, we propose a strategy for the diffusion of S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) among important infrastructures, governmental organizations, various enterprises, and other organizations.

In recent years, extreme weather events have been more frequent due to climate change and the influence of global warming. Consequently, flood and soil erosion have caused serious damage in various places. It is difficult to accurately predict the timing and magnitude of such flooding events. Therefore, limited progress has been made regarding safety measures to be taken in preparation for flooding. Once a disaster occurs, a delay in initial action can cause a variety of problems that require extensive recovery time and a delay in reconstruction. This study estimates the different types of disaster waste that could result from flooding in the anticipated inundation area of the Kinugawa River, with a particular focus on waste from housing and buildings. Varying situations and rainfall information related to concerned municipalities were also taken into account. The results of this study point out disaster waste caused by potential floods in the Kinugawa River under various situations. It is hoped that the method of this study can be used as a prediction tool.

Recently many gas stations in Japan have closed down due to the aging society, eco-cars, price competition and so on. More hydrogen stations for Fuel Cell Vehicles, on the other hand, are needed in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine how mobile service stations improve accessibility in a linear market, where service stations are frequented on trips associated with origins and destinations. We derive the upper and lower bounds of detour distances for mobile stations using a rectilinear Voronoi diagram in two-dimensional space. Then we compare two different mobile station visiting schemes by devising spatio-temporal scheduling for uniformly and independently distributed origins and destinations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the mobile station could significantly improve user accessibility compared to that of fixed service stations.

Japan is a country of frequent natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons, floods, and volcanic eruptions. Vehicles equipped with large fuel tank and battery capacity are expected to be useful when disaster occurs. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the remaining amount of vehicle-owned energy based on data from the Toyota City low-carbon society system demonstration project, and examine the potential availability of such vehicle-owned energy in stricken areas. First, we calculate how many cars would be available and how far the cars would be able to travel to evacuate the stricken area and reach safety, assuming there are no places to refuel along the way. Secondly, we compute the amount of vehicle energy in terms of electric energy in areas that would potentially be damaged by a Nankai Trough earthquake. Thus, we evaluate the quantitative potential of vehicles in stricken areas.

In addition, we give an example demonstrating the significance of vehicle open data through the Internet of Things.

Improving the effectiveness of administrative plans is a very important issue in the field of planning studies, but it is quite difficult to evaluate effectiveness. Therefore, this study takes a look at this issue by expressing the effectiveness of plans at the introduction level of planning tools, which is easier to evaluate than effectiveness itself.

The purpose of this study is to draw the common features of plans receiving high evaluation marks at the introduction level from all sectoral basic plans established from 2000 to 2015.

The analysis revealed that plans received much higher ‘introduction marks’ than ‘revision marks,’ and, in most cases, revision marks were linked to making progress schedules and so on. Furthermore, we gained three practical findings which will advance our understanding of planning studies.