When I was a newcomer, I had no digital knowledge at all.

He was born and raised in Morimachi. Mr. Yamagata graduated from high school in 1998 and started working at the Mori Town Hall. He was first assigned to a department in charge of town housing, and after five years, he was moved to the information department.

When I started working at the town hall, there was only one word processor in the office, and approval requests were handwritten. Around 2000, local governments started calling for 'one computer per person,' and the government took the initiative in promoting the use of IT.

My first job was to install LAN cables in the government building. I also set up computers, built servers, designed networks, and took care of everything related to digital technology. I didn't go to school for information technology, so I didn't know much about it, and I was the youngest person in the town hall, so I was put in charge," laughs Yamagata.

I was the youngest person in the town hall," Yamagata laughs. "I received technical support from the vendor who was building the infrastructure, but they were all very nice people, and when I didn't understand something, they would carefully explain it to me. They would often say, 'It will cost you a lot of money if you ask our company to do this, so you should do it yourself. I'll show you how to do it. Supported by the conscience of the Internet, I absorbed more and more knowledge.

Mr. Yamagata in 2003, when he had just become a full-time information officer.

For the first five years, he devoted himself to setting up facilities. I spent my days just trying to get things up and running. Just when I thought things were finally taking shape, it was time to renew the equipment..." This cycle kept him constantly working at full capacity.

The local university accepted me, because I wanted to do research.

In such a situation, the issue of cost reduction was always on the agenda.

If you ask vendors to do everything for you, the cost tends to be high. I wanted to use new technology to solve this problem, but the town hall could not raise the expense. At first I was doing the research on my own, but as my technical skills improved, the scale of the project increased. There were times when I wanted to spend several million yen to test the technology, but it was indeed tough."

At that time, he asked me, "What do you think is the meaning of having a university in the community?" My boss at the time asked me, "What do you think is the meaning of having a university in the community? He advised me, "If you want to do something new to solve a problem or issue in the community, you should consult with the university and they may be able to do research with you.

I thought, "Well, that's what a university is for," so I contacted Professor Michiko Oba, who came up in a mixi search for "Future University Hakodate". She was very interested and said, 'Come visit us right away.

Future University Hakodate

The unexpected disaster showed us the direction we should go.

Future University Hakodate is a single-department school with one faculty, the Faculty of Systems and Information Sciences. When a town hall employee jumped in and said, "I want to do research," the professor may have been surprised. Nevertheless, they saw Mr. Yamagata's enthusiasm and focused on joint research.

It was then that the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. The town of Mori, located in southern Hokkaido, near the Tohoku region, was also hit by the disaster, with the tsunami hitting as close as possible to the evacuation center where residents had gathered.

When we tried to use the telephone to make contact, we could not get a connection. But we were able to use Internet communication, and once again we were reminded of its strength in times of disaster. At the same time, when foreign residents wanted to contact their home country, there was the problem that no one but me knew about the network at the town hall. So I became increasingly convinced that we needed to create an environment in which everyone could work together on an ongoing basis.

In 2012, the company began full-scale operation of a public cloud (a service that allows users to share and use servers, software, etc. via the Internet) in municipalities. The concept of open data is a concept that is being used by large and medium-sized universities and other public organizations.

Dr. Ohba taught me the concept of open data. The concept of "open by default" is that the data created by us in the municipal office is public property, and everyone should be able to use it. He said it was very interesting research.

I want to leave the memory of the disappearing city somewhere.

And now, changes are happening in his personal life as well.

My grandmother has dementia. I was a grandma's child, so I was conflicted about putting her in an institution, and I felt lonely not being able to talk to her properly.

The memory of my grandmother faded day by day. Witnessing her grandmother's fading memory, Ms. Yamagata began to wonder if she could preserve her grandmother's information. When he talked about this with a friend who is well versed in open data, whom he met through joint research with Mirai University, he was told that "archiving old information as well as new information can be a database," and that "there are also activities to preserve old data.

He said, "At first it was for personal reasons, to preserve the town that my grandma had seen, but then I began to think that maybe there are people who actually like Morimachi and want to preserve the history of the area. When I looked at the Wikipedia page for Morimachi, there were only nine entries at the time. But there were many more stories I heard from my grandmother. So I decided to preserve them, and started an organization called Haumori.

In 2015, Haumori hosted the first "Wikipedia Town Morimachi," where 10 participants researched Morimachi's history at the library and added information to Wikipedia. This activity quickly enriched the information on Morimachi, which had only nine entries. Even those who had never heard of Morimachi could now understand the general framework of the town simply by opening the Wikipedia page.

The Wikipedia Town initiative won the LOD Challenge 2014 Grand Prize in the Idea Category (2015).

Memories of the town are also recorded in photographs.

He then started the "Memory Record" project, in which he collects old photographs related to Morimachi and takes pictures of them while matching them with the current landscape, while also holding open data study sessions and events.

I was continuing this project as a kind of hobby, but then a friend from Rissho University asked me if we could do something together," he said. So he brought a student to Hokkaido to help me identify which old photos were of which places and to actually go out and take current photos.

This activity continued for three years, with students visiting Morimachi every year. Some of the students actively worked to start the same project in their hometowns, and others organized exhibitions of old photos and maps at university festivals, and "Memory Record" gradually expanded beyond Morimachi.

Students selecting photos with residents of Morimachi

Yamagata, who has seen his once-analog community gradually become more colorful with the help of the Internet, will retire from the town office at the end of 2021 and begin working to create a more affluent lifestyle not only in Morimachi, but also in the neighboring communities.

Mr. Yamagata giving a lecture at Rissho University

You can work and live happily even in the countryside.

Currently, Mr. Yamagata is a member of Code for Japan, a general incorporated association, and as a member of the Govtech team, focuses on research and support for the digitization of government administration throughout Japan, while also conducting community activities related to the use of information technology in local governments in Hokkaido. As an expert with a deep knowledge of open data, he is also active as an "open data evangelist" dispatched to seminars and other events hosted by local governments.

He is currently renovating a second-hand property to create a base location. Rather than trying to fulfill big dreams or ambitions, I try to do interesting things that are right in front of me. When he gets a little bored, he quits. How does Mr. Yamagata's stance reflect in the eyes of the local community?

The name of the new base is "Yamanaka Digital.

Currently under renovation.

For about a year, I've been doing a content project where I put on an earphone microphone every morning and use an audio social networking app to talk with people as I commute to work. I've been doing this for about a year now, and even though I've retired from the town office, there are rumors that a big guy is walking around town in the morning, grinning by himself... (laughs). (Laughs.) Yes, it's a bit bizarre, isn't it? I wonder what he does for a living? I hear he's doing something amazing with IT.

It is unsettling to have people whispering about you behind your back, but according to Mr. Yamagata, "It would be good if more rumors came out about you. But, according to Mr. Yamagata, "It would be good if more people talked about it." This is because, he says, there is still a strong image of limited job opportunities in rural areas, such as taking over the family business, becoming a government employee, or working at a supermarket.

I hope that young people can get the idea that there are many more jobs out there, and that they can work in the countryside in a good way, from the sight of adults who don't really know what they are doing.

Mr. Yamagata's favorite view of Mt. Komagatake and the setting sun

It goes without saying that the remote work and dual-location lifestyles that have become so popular in recent years are made possible by the power of the Internet. If more young people from Morimachi would come to work in new ways, the town would become even more interesting. Not only in the way of working, but also in the way of life itself, the feeling that "it's impossible because it's in the countryside" may be fading away, little by little.

Mr. Yamagata continues to practice his motto, "Well, sit down," in every corner of the town, and continues to light up the small town with a ray of light brought by digital technology.