Ministry of Home Affairs, 594 local governments (47 prefectures, 12 designated cities, 198 cities, 327 towns and villages, and 10 other organizations) had opened or were going to open home pages in 1996. By March 1997 it is thought that 90.1% of local governments will have opened home pages. The survey also reveals that 151 local governments plan to set up their own home pages after 1997. Data 3 shows the list of URLs of the prefectures and designated cities.
Tourist information is the most common content of the home pages, followed by information about government services and events. Many other kinds of information are also provided.
2. Policies of the national government and Ministry of Home Affairs
The national government has set up a www server in the Prime Minister's Office to transmit information both within Japan and abroad. Each ministry also transmits governmental information such as white papers via the internet.
Such trends have been implemented based on the five-year Governmental Information Infrastructure Promotion Plan decided by the Cabinet in December 1994. The internet is a useful tool for collecting the opinions of the people in order to draw up better policies. Such are the examples of the attention given to the internet as a new media by the government.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Home Affairs has supported local governments engaged in systems development and preparation of contents since 1995 by granting a special tax allocation. The Ministry itself set up is home page in June 1996 and now provides a search service, "Explore Japan", operated jointly with the Local Government Information Centre, the Regional Revitalization Centre and the Local Authorities Internationalization Association.
The number of organizations opening their own home pages, such as business enterprises, is rapidly increasing, which is why it can be very difficult to find the required information quickly. In such circumstances, even if a local government opens its own home page and starts to provide local information, it is difficult for users to find the home page. A new search-system is required specially for local government home page information.
