To Local Governments: Let AI Agents Handle Overtime Work / April 1st is April Dream

Our company supports April Dream, which aims to make April 1st a day to express dreams. This press release is the dream of "Kawaguchi Hiroyuki LLC."

Japan's Local Government '2040 Problem'

Are you familiar with the term "2040 Problem"? This refers to the significant challenges that Japanese society is expected to face around 2040.

Specifically, it's a problem where, as Japan's population continues to decline while the elderly population increases, local governments will face reduced tax revenues and labor shortages, making it difficult to continue providing administrative services as before.

Already, there's an increasing number of young staff leaving their positions, and concerns are being raised from the field that "local government operations might face a crisis even before 2040."

The Potential of "In-Office Work Sharing" as a Means to Resolve Inter-Departmental Mismatches

As local government CIO assistants, we have proposed an "in-office work sharing" system as a means to bridge the differences in busy and slack periods between departments.

The rule is simple: "You must not do your own department's work during overtime hours."

• During daytime working hours, dedicate full effort to your own department's work.

• If work is not finished during working hours, do not simply transition to overtime; always entrust it to someone else in another department.

• Younger staff who are energetic and eager to work can apply to take on overtime work from other departments.

• Within the office, a matching bulletin board is set up for staff to exchange information about entrusting and accepting overtime work.

However, as the number of staff willing to take on overtime work decreases, there's a possibility that this in-office work sharing system may no longer be viable.

Furthermore, the number of "fiscal year appointed staff" who are asked to perform local government duties in place of regular staff is also decreasing, and even with recruitment efforts, people are not gathering. In other words, there is an absolute shortage of personnel to whom tasks can be entrusted.

Utilization of AI Agents

This is where "AI agents," utilizing AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology, come into focus.

The idea of "entrusting tasks to AI" might still seem like something for the distant future, but in reality, AI is already starting to play an active role in many white-collar tasks, replacing humans.

What's important here is the preparatory work of "organizing tasks that must be done by humans and tasks that should be entrusted to AI."

The concept of in-office work sharing becomes relevant here. What this means is that when faced with the necessity of entrusting work to someone else (including AI), staff will need to perform business process reengineering (BPR) to organize their own work, deciding "what to undertake themselves and what to entrust to others." To entrust work to others, it's necessary to define and verbalize not only the task content but also the preconditions, expected outcomes, and deadlines, effectively packaging the work itself.

In this way, staff will also become accustomed to entrusting work to others.

The Future of Local Governments Using Storage Manager

Kawaguchi Hiroyuki LLC's "procureTech Storage Manager," an AI agent and file management support system for local governments, utilizes local AI to automatically analyze and organize vast amounts of scattered files within the office, promoting business improvement and data utilization through AI agents.

Beyond just organizing internal file servers, by leveraging the information accumulated within the servers, it becomes possible to assign various tasks to AI agents.

The procedures and basic knowledge for these tasks to be executed by AI agents are defined as documents called "agent skills," which can be modified and extended to suit the specific circumstances of each local government. This enables business operations tailored to the needs of each local government.

This mechanism can be said to be an extension of the "work packaging" required for in-office work sharing to AI, and that is where its great significance lies.

Furthermore, when handling resident information or confidential data, information leakage is prevented by operating the generative AI engine in a closed environment within the office. On the other hand, publicly available information utilizes cloud-based AI engines, and by designing the system to appropriately use local AI and cloud AI according to the confidentiality of information assets, both performance and security are achieved.

Our April 1st dream is for a new way of working, "People, People, People, People, AI," to take root in local government workplaces. We will continue to strive for Storage Manager to play a significant role in achieving this.