Municipal authorities in Kaga City, situated in the Ishikawa Prefecture of Japan, have introduced a blockchain-powered app that is named Local Government Form Electronic Application (LoGo). That app will oversee the functioning of the city’s most important administrative procedures.
A statement released yesterday reads, that the app now “gives the opportunity to local government staff to easily and quickly issue an administrative application form that is filed online without needing a paper or stamp, and enables citizens to carry out administrative tasks comfortably using a smartphone”.
Municipal authorities have been working on the creation of the LoGo app ever since May 2020, when Kaga City concluded a cooperation deal with its partners on the project – Trust Bank and xID.
The company xID is a tech startup focused on the development of blockchain identity solutions, in the aim of its main mission to enable digitization and automation of critical procedures in order to make these services more accessible to the general public despite the rapid demographic decline and aging population, as has been observed throughout Japan.
Five years ago, Japan implemented the My Number Card, which is purposely designed to be the nation’s social security and tax identity card. After that, Kaga City tried to fast-forward the adoption of the My Number Card by giving away gift cards holding 5,000 yen (equating to around $48.80) to all people applying for the card.
Local government employees have revealed that thus far, the measure has contributed strongly to meet their desired result, because the number of local citizens that have presented application forms for My Number Card currently exceeds the average number at the national level.
