Well, actually in the morning, we went to Naha City Postal Savings Division (under Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications Postal Savings Bureau). The participants were told that the center was a highly secured area and no photos should be taken within the data center.

First, we were introduced to Mr. Hanashiro, Head of the Postal Savings Division in Okinawa. Business Office of Postal Savings roles are: to control and manage the data of savings, exchange, and transfer in all the post office in Japan (there are approximately 24,600 post offices throughout Japan); to exchange all data with one of the two Computer Centers, i.e. in Kobe. Kobe is configured as the West Japan Computer Center while another one is considered as the East Japan Computer Center. The exact location was not made known to us, but probably within Tokyo or Kyoto area. Okinawa Office of Posts and Telecommunications is only one of the total twelve Regional Bureau of Postal Inspections which in turn reports to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. Regional Bureau of Postal Inspection is the institution which manage and guide Business Center of Postal Savings, Post Office, and Computer Center in its area.

The following is a brief explanantion of Data Processing in Business Office of Postal Savings:

It is divided into manual processing and computer processing.

Manual Processing.

There are four manual processing functions:

a. Jimu (Business) Center Work Station (JWS). Among JWS functions are: Reference of Accounting Data; Process Real-time Information and input collected data; and Input Reported Data. Other functions are Optical Disk Data Retrieval, Daily Transaction Business, and Supervisory Business. In other words, JWS is used for checking the data of savings account from post office and input the data of any document which post office dealt with.

b. Business Center Terminal Machine (BCTM) inputs reported data for JWS. BCTM will hold the saving account when it is reported that Cash Card was lost or stolen. The service is available on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.

c. Regional Management Information System Terminal Machine (RMIT)’s functions are input and output of the business information. It is used for retrieving various data, such as information on a saving account, from Computer Center and output the data for Business Section. In the near future, RMIT will be installed in every post office so that information can be collected and distributed rapidly and accurately.

d. Central Management Information System Terminal Machine (CMIT) will input monthly and yearly settlement data in a Business Office of Postal Savings and then transmit them to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

Computer Processing.

Its function is to transmit data to one of the Computer Center and receive the result using a small-scale computer. The small-scale computer is operated 24 hours a day.

At the end of the tour, the class leader gave a thank you speech and presented a gift to the Postal Savings Division personnel.