Government Innovation Project
“規制のサンドボックス制度とは、IoT、ブロックチェーン、ロボット等の新たな技術の実用化や、プラットフォーマー型ビジネス、シェアリングエコノミーなどの新たなビジネスモデルの実施が、現行規制との関係で困難である場合に、新しい技術やビジネスモデルの社会実装に向け、事業者の申請に基づき、規制官庁の認定を受けた実証を行い、実証により得られた情報やデータを用いて規制の見直しに繋げていく制度です。”
— Prime Minister’s Office of Japan
“Innovation and transformation” are not the well-used words to describe an up-and-running government agency due to the limited budget, political appeal, and crowd consciousness. Like what we have often heard, government employees have less flexibility to use public money to try innovative approaches; and it’s even harder to keep investing after being defeated. The good news is some private and nonprofit enterprises are participating in the social innovation queue to help local governments run their innovation wheel so that they can fulfill the social needs and adopt policies and regulations beforehand.
The rapid development in mobility and technology around the world is a challenge for the governments as, for many cases, they are unable to react and test these new ideas and prevent irreversible catastrophes to society. One of the top-ranked innovation economies in the world, the Japanese government started an action to solve this. In Japan, a new “Sandbox” program had been introduced to accelerate innovations with new technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) in fields such as financial services, healthcare, and transportation. The most recent project among 129 companies that currently operate under the sandbox framework is the partnership between the city of Wakayama and Japanese private E-bike company Glafit. This project focuses on regulating the use of E-bikes. The Sandbox framework allows a city or state government to speed up the approval cycle for projects by first, implementing it in a pilot city like Wakayama. Thus, the Sandbox framework will “potentially increase investments and economic returns.”
Whether it’s private capitals directly involved in the government agenda such as Bloomberg Innovation Lab, Annenberg Innovation Lab, and Living Cities, or local government getting involved through the Private-Public -Partnerships (PPP) “fast ride”, it is crucial to create a platform for government agencies that are willing to challenge themselves and adopt long-term innovation planning. It’s a good sign to see many megacities have a sustainable civic innovation lab those days but this is still a challenge for those with limited innovation budgets, lack of public trust, and excessively focus on political gains.
