What “70% Still Use Fax” Reveals: The “Reproducibility of Digitalization” That Management Must Purchase

Over 70% of public elementary and junior high schools still use fax machines on a daily basis.

It is dangerous to dismiss this news as merely “schools lagging in digitalization.” This reality reflects, with stark clarity, a fundamental IT strategy challenge faced by all organizations. Executives and CTOs should overlay this “70% fax usage” reality onto their own company’s IT investments. You will likely see surprisingly common structural problems.

The essence of the problem is not the persistence of the “old technology” of fax itself. It lies in management’s failure to purchase the “reproducibility” of digitalization—the mechanism to reliably replicate a successful reform in one area to another location or process.

The Real Disparity Hidden Behind the “Ibaraki #1” Ranking

The news reports that Ibaraki Prefecture ranks first in a prefectural school DX ranking. At first glance, this emphasizes a “horizontal disparity” between advanced and lagging regions. However, from a management perspective, the critical issue is this “vertical disconnect.”

Suppose at one school, a group of dedicated teachers introduces a cloud-based communication tool, dramatically improving communication with parents. This is a success story of “Operational IT.” But will that success reliably propagate to the neighboring school, or another school in the same city? Often, it does not. Because that success depends on individual effort and has not been elevated into a standardized organizational process (Management IT) supported by a stable foundation (Administrative IT).

Doesn’t this same structure exist within your company? While Slack or Salesforce permeate the sales department, the general affairs department continues with paper-based approval forms and faxed orders. This disconnect between “Operational IT” and “Administrative IT” is the biggest barrier to organization-wide digitalization. The true measure of Ibaraki Prefecture’s efforts is whether they have built a reproducible model that resolves this “vertical disconnect.”

“Frontline Pride” and “Management Reproducibility” Can Coexist

Another related news item, “Protect the ‘Pride’ of Analog Frontline Staff with Digital,” offers an important insight. Even in schools, the tightly-knit communication network built over years using fax and phone may hold a kind of “pride” or trust in its reliability. A digitalization effort that dismisses this as “outdated” will face resistance and fail.

Management should aim to elevate this “frontline pride = reliably functioning processes” into a “reproducible asset” using digital power. For example, when dealing with a client who only accepts orders by fax, management faces two choices.

One is the Administrative IT mindset: “Keep the fax and ensure someone is assigned to handle it.” The other is the Management IT mindset: “How can we automatically digitize information received by fax and integrate it into existing workflows (saving to cloud storage, registering customer info in CRM).” Concrete solutions for the latter exist, such as implementing cloud fax services (e.g., GFAX or RICOH eFAX).

The key is not just implementing a tool, but clearly defining the management objective: preserving the value of “reliable communication” while making the process visible and integrable as data. Protecting “pride” is not about maintaining the status quo; it is an investment to realize that core value in a more robust and reproducible form.

The True Role of Kobe City’s “Chief Digitalization Officer”

It is shortsighted to interpret Kobe City’s recruitment for a “Chief Digitalization Officer” as merely hiring advanced IT talent. The essence of this position should be understood as the role of a “Unifier of Objective Functions.”

Within municipalities, IT for disaster prevention (rapid information dissemination), IT for welfare (reliable benefit distribution), and IT for the board of education (equitable learning opportunities) often operate independently with fragmented objectives. This is the root cause of digitalization failing to permeate down to school sites. The chief officer’s primary mission is to redefine these disparate IT investments under a single management objective—”improving the quality of life for citizens” (the management objective for a municipality)—and design cross-functional reproducibility.

In the private sector, this is the essential role of the CTO or DX promotion lead: designing data linkages between SaaS tools (Salesforce, Slack, freee, Money Forward) introduced individually by departments, and connecting the small purpose of departmental “efficiency” to the larger corporate purpose of “accelerating growth and enhancing decision-making.” This “unification of objective functions” is the most critical strategic judgment that management must not delegate to specialists.

Three Investments Management Must Make to Purchase “Digitalization Reproducibility”

So, what should executives invest in to avoid creating disconnects like the “70% fax” issue? They should invest in the following three types of “reproducibility.”

1. Reproducibility of Process Visualization

To replicate a successful operational improvement from one department in another, you first need a common language to visualize the “As-Is process.” This requires investment in standardizing diagramming tools like BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) or regularizing process visualization workshops using collaboration boards like Miro. This allows processes reliant on fax and fully digital processes to be discussed on the same footing.

2. Reproducibility of Data Integration

This involves standardizing the “pipes” through which data flows across departments. Specifically, it means investing in the introduction of no-code/low-code integration tools like Zapier, Make, or Power Automate, and establishing rules for their use. Accumulate patterns like “When this data in Tool A is updated, notify Tool B in this format,” and make them standard company assets. This turns integrations known only to a few “capable people” into reproducible organizational assets.

3. Reproducibility of Decision-Making

This is the most crucial investment. It involves embedding a framework into management meetings that consistently asks: “Why are we introducing this tool?” and “What decisions do we want to make faster and more reliably with this investment?” For example, mandate that all IT investment proposals include a sheet answering: “Which KPIs can be measured/improved with this introduction?” and “Which data from other departments is it intended to integrate with?” This converges the fragmented purposes of departmental IT onto the single point of “enhancing the quality and speed of management decisions.”

The Fundamental Problem Not Solved by the “Deji-with” Manga

The Japan Small and Medium Enterprise Agency’s “Deji-with” manga introducing digitalization is certainly commendable for its approachability. However, it, like many support measures and portal sites, overlooks a fundamental problem. While it teaches “how to use” tools, it does not extend to supporting the definition of management’s purpose—”what to decide” using those tools.

What executives need is not instruction on how to input data into accounting software like freee, but the story of “how to utilize freee’s data for management analysis and how to apply it to personnel investment decisions for the next quarter.” If this “connection from tool to decision” remains blank, tool implementation ends as mere task “replacement” and never achieves true digitalization = “enhancement of decision-making.”

The “70% fax” frontline is the same. Before teaching how to operate a cloud communication tool, it’s necessary to share the purpose: “What specific issues with parents will this tool solve, and how will the resulting data be used to improve school management?” Introducing tools without purpose is just a new burden.

Summary: What Management Buys is Not Tools, But the Blueprint for Reproducibility

The fax problem in public schools is a microcosm of Japanese society as a whole. It cannot be solved by individual frontline efforts or a few advanced examples (like Ibaraki). What’s needed is a decision by the management layer to strategically purchase “digitalization reproducibility” itself at a cost and embed it into the organizational framework.

Executives and CTOs, identify what your company’s “fax” is right now. It may not be a physical machine, but person-dependent processes, data siloed between departments, or a collection of tools with ambiguous purposes. Connect them through investment in the three reproducibilities: visualization, integration, and decision-making. That is the answer not to the surface of the news, but to the essential challenge behind it: the “IT redefinition by management.”

Digitalization delay is not a technical problem; it is the “result of a decision” by management not to design for reproducibility. Therefore, the solution must also begin with a management decision.