Change Inc. and Konica Minolta Publitech, Inc. announced their strategy for Govmates, Inc., a joint venture that provides DX services for local governments.
Konica Minolta said that by establishing the head office in Ehime Prefecture, Govmates Inc. will promote DX of the operations of local governments across Japan as a “locally based” platform holder to help realise “local revitalisation through digital implementation” as advocated by the national government.
Three Strategies of Govmates, Inc:
- Working with regional co-creation partners: Govmates, Inc. will increase customers (for direct sales) by utilising the sales channels that have been developed by Change and Konica Minolta Publitech. It will offer services and solutions that meet the needs of local governments across Japan, especially those of basic local governments that face issues peculiar to respective regions, while strengthening and expanding the network with partners in respective regions maintained by Change and Konica Minolta Publitech. The joint venture will also help create local jobs through collaboration in respective regions. In addition, it will resolve issues by involving companies, organisations, and residents committed to achieving regional revitalisation, as well as partner companies that are familiar with regional characteristics.
- Accumulating and utilising data: Govmates, Inc. will offer new added value to help increase efficiency and standardise operations of local governments, by combining, analyzing, and utilising the operational datasets of various local governments accumulated through surveys on work volume, which are conducted based on proprietary know-how acquired through offering services to public offices, private companies, and local governments and through BPR, as well as in-house datasets and datasets owned by partners. For example, efforts will be made to improve operations based on the operational datasets of local governments maintained by Govmates, Inc. and offer high added value to local governments’ services for residents by linking the extensive regional datasets owned by companies that have strengths in smart city projects with data owned by companies that work on improving services for residents.
- Providing one-stop services for local government DX: Govmates, Inc. will strengthen collaboration with more partners, including major solution providers which operate on a national level and SaaS vendors with strengths in respective fields. It will meet the needs for DX of respective local governments and offer package solutions to resolve issues by combining various services. The issues of local governments resolved by leveraging the strengths of respective companies will be accumulated as improvement examples on the Govmates platform and shared among local government officials. This will enable the collection of information and support autonomous promotion of DX. Govmates, a local government DX support platform, will serve as the core of this strategy.
The joint venture will be established on 1 April 2022.
