Case Study – Toyota City

“We aim to be a city hall office that all citizens should be able to complete their administrative tasks through our digital channels. To achieve this, we must ensure that processes which can be simplified and automated truly are,” explains Mr. Ryosuke Kuwana, who is in charge of system and infrastructure of Toyota City. “NSS has significantly reduced our operational overhead, allowing us to focus on more important initiatives.”

With rising global costs and a rapidly evolving digital landscape, Toyota City needed to reevaluate their IT solutions to address an expanding range of responsibilities. “NSS was the only solution that could fulfill all of our data and permissions management needs,” says Mr. Kuwana. “We needed a versatile platform that could support both our current requirements as well as future ones.” The main reasons for implementing NSS at Toyota City are:

• Reduce storage costs
  As data volumes continue to grow, so do storage requirements and associated costs. Understanding why data grows, and preventing accumulation of unnecessary data, is essential for keeping long-term storage expenses in check.
• Reduce overhead for both IT and users
  Time spent on resolving user tickets is time not spent on other more important tasks. At the same time, work grinds to a halt when users can’t solve their file access issues. By enabling better file data management and self-service capabilities, NSS helps shorten resolution times and reduces the workload for IT teams.
• Protect sensitive data
  Municipal governments handle large amounts of personal and sensitive information. Ensuring that only authorised personnel have access to this data is critical to preventing data leaks and maintaining public trust.

Improving Operational Efficiency with NSS

The effects of using NSS were felt immediately. “Before, when we asked our users to remove unused data, they often didn’t know where this data was stored. We tried building our own tools to find this data, but it was a slow process that required a significant manual effort from us”, explains Mr. Kuwana. NSS provides contextual information to the ROT data (Redundant, Obsolete, Trivial) it finds. “With NSS, we can pinpoint both where this data is located as well as who the files belong to”, says Ms. Hiroko Ito, NSS Operations Manager. “For example, when we identify an unusually large and unused file, we can immediately contact the user responsible for that file”, she continues. “This helps us to support the users much faster and more efficiently than before”.

Combining the analytics capabilities and quota management of NSS has been a major driver of operational efficiency. “Before we started using NSS, departments would request quota increases and we had little choice but to approve them”, describes Ms. Ito. “Now with detailed usage insight available in NSS, we can determine whether a quota increase is truly necessary, or if it is a case of ROT data taking up unnecessary space”.

Preventing Unauthorised Data Access

With a large number of citizens relying on Toyota City’s digital services, protecting digital assets is central to the IT team’s digital strategy. NSS supports this effort through the core capability of being a centralised Permissions Management solution. “We have experienced several cases of permissions being incorrectly configured, sometimes even locking authorised users out of their own data”, Mr. Kuwana explains. 

NSS has dramatically reduced the time required to complete permissions-related tasks at Toyota City. Processes  is improving both security and operational efficiency.

Looking Ahead

The digital landscape is continuing to rapidly evolve. As a provider of public services, Toyota City is committed to following current data management best practices and in parallel preparing for future challenges. “We already have several works planned with NSS to further reduce ROT data” says Ms. Ito.

“We can clearly see the value of leveraging the capabilities of NSS to find, manage, and secure both sensitive data and personal information. Moving toward a full information lifecycle management approach is on the horizon, and NSS can take a leading role in that journey.”