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• Taro Kono, Japan's new minister for administrative reform, is wasting no time in starting his crusade to cut down on bureaucratic red tape, reports The Japan Times, and among his first targets is the fax machine, which is still in use in more than 95% of businesses in Japan.
"I don't think there are many administrative procedures that actually need printing out paper and faxing," Kono said on Sept. 25.
A day after being appointed to his new job, Kono created a red-tape hotline on his website, inviting public input, that had to be shut down the next day after receiving more than 4,000 responses. [The Japan Times, 9/27/2020]
• Keith Bebonis knows a secret about the Chicago Police Department, reported the Chicago Sun-Times on Sept. 25: They still use typewriters.
Bebonis knows because he repairs them when the officers "abuse" them.
"Police officers, in general, are very heavy typists," said Bebonis, 46, who carries on the business his dad started in the late 1960s, Bebon Office Machines and Supplies.
He contracts every year to repair 40 to 50 IBM Wheelwriters -- early word-processing machines that can store a few pages' worth of data.
"I don't want it to seem like I'm saying they're taking their frustrations out on the typewriter," Bebonis said.
"But they're just not very sensitive with these machines." [Chicago Sun-Times, 9/25/2020]