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I don't know the specific facts of this case, but I see a lot of speculation on what is wrong with "IT in Japan", and it's a complicated (and not exclusive to Japan) issue. I've worked in enterprise and public sector IT for most of my time in Japan so let me offer some thoughts. https://twitter.com/hikosaemon/status/1386987487298396162
The real problems here are structural, and the key challenge common to both government and commercial IT is the stranglehold that large system integrators have on IT in Japan. Many companies and government agencies run on outdated IT because that's the business model of the SIs/2
To explain further, most govt and enterprise customers in Japan do not do IT in house. They go to one of the big integrators and the pay for the whole thing to get done. At the end of the project, they will often hire people from the SIer to become CIO/3
The "old boy" CIO will then ensure that all maintenance and update work is contracted back to the company that built the system that they parachuted in from. It also means the "power/position" of the CIO is based on their knowledge of THAT system that they built /4
So the job of the CIO is to keep their job by making sure they hold onto outdated systems that only they know best, and keep the money flowing to the old county by blocking off opportunities for other SIs to "steal" the customer with new systems /5
I've seen cases where decisions to implement ERP systems or migrate to more secure/resilient cloud infrastructure needed to be done via internal "coups" against the SI company that was lobbying against such updates and improvements. /6
Hence, most government still uses crappy limited capacity NT based physical in house servers, because the big SI companies are still forcing them to buy it, and cashing in on the development work for them. Good news is that even in govt, customer demand is turning the tide /7
SIs are now scrambling to retrain their engineers on more up to date infrastructure and security. But the demand for these skills is WAY above supply, because SIs deliberately held it back trying to draw out legacy revenue streams. That's also why they underpay engineers /8
I'm guessing the real issue with this story is not incompetence of govt. I mean it is. But the point is that it is their CIO and his/her SI buddies who have been providing substandard public sector IT work for steady revenue for decades. /9
The good news is that the government is aware of this issue and is setting up the Digital Agency to break it up. The SI's themselves know the game is up and are scrambling to retrain. When the SIs start selling new/better tech, they may be net contributors rather than causes/end
