GovTechTokyo was established with the support of Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) to drive digital transformation of public services, inspired by the collaborative spirit of the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI). Just like LOTI, we believe in the power of collaboration and innovation to improve the lives of residents of Tokyo.

The Challenges We Face

What are the main challenges that GovTechTokyo is trying to address? Tokyo faces the following main challenges in transforming public services.

• Low residents’ satisfaction with digitalisation of public services
• Struggle to retain talents and know-how to promote digitalisation in municipalities within Tokyo
• Ensure quality of increasing digital public services

GovTechTokyo is working to overcome these challenges in collaboration with TMG and its 62 municipalities. We aim to create a more convenient and comfortable life through the digital innovation for residents in Tokyo such as achieving similar success in London.

Collaboration and Innovation

Our approach is based on collaboration and innovation. We operate as a hub for collaboration between TMG, 62 municipalities, and private sector partners. We envision contributing to foster an ecosystem where diverse stakeholders can come together to optimise administrative processes, improve the quality of public services through digital technologies and co-create innovative solutions in the future.

What does GovTechTokyo actually do?

We provide various services in collaboration with TMG as one team.

• Digital Transformation for the TMG: Supporting digitalization of TMG collaborating in upstream processes such as projects under consideration.
• Digital Transformation for municipalities: Providing hands-on support for digitalisation of all municipalities to help them solve the common issues.
• Infrastructure & Joint-Use: Leading joint procurement and development of systems and digital tools for joint-use among municipalities.
• Recruitment & Training: Helping municipalities by providing recruitment support for digital talents interested in public services. Supporting human resource development through training.
• Data utilization: Operational support of the Tokyo Data Platform, a common data platform for the public & private sectors. Supporting distribution of various open data.
• Public-private co-creation: Creating new solutions with public & private sectors that contribute to overcoming administrative challenges.

Key Initiatives Driving Change

Here are some of our current projects: 

 Push-based services supporting child-rearing

We have worked collaboratively with municipalities and public-private partnerships. This project is one of the digital transformation projects for the children’s sector and aims to eliminate the three types of missed opportunities; “fail to know” “fail to apply” and “fail to receive” by delivering necessary childcare support information in a push-based approach.

We built a registry about the services of TMG and all municipalities providing support for child-rearing. We’ve been able to provide over 30,000 messages with timely and relevant information using the registry by working together with private sector partners. We were able to get good satisfaction from users.

Building a Generative AI Platform

GovTechTokyo is trying to develop a Generative AI Platform as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), using open source software for easily creating applications. This platform supports multiple Workspace (like separate accounts) for different organisations. This allows each entity to have an isolated environment. Potential use cases of AI applications are for example, enhancing the efficiency of text processing operations, Q&A system utilizing proprietary data, and development of Task-Specific Assistants.

Expected benefits for TMG and municipalities as follows:

• Easy AI App Development: Government staff can develop AI-powered applications needed for their work without specialized technical knowledge.
• Efficient and Cost-Effective: Users don’t need to set up their own development environments, allowing them to focus on AI App development. This leads to significant efficiency gains and cost savings.
• Shareable Digital Assets: AI Apps created by each user can be shared, and reused by other local governments, creating valuable “digital public Goods”.
• Integration with Other Tools: Developed AI apps can be provided as APIs, enabling seamless integration with other tools, such as chat applications, as needed.

Building a Better Future

Our vision is “Change the present public services, Change the future from Capital “Tokyo” through the power of digital innovation”. We exist to make a backcasting role in creating changes for the future of Tokyo. We’ve continued to learn from the valuable experiences of LOTI and hope to strengthen our collaborative relationship, sharing best practices to the innovation of digital public services for the residents of both our great cities. We believe that we can create a future where collaboration and innovation empowers and improves the lives of people.

For more information about our projects visit our website: https://www.govtechtokyo.or.jp/