Japan's government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, two decades since their heyday, reaching a long-awaited milestone in a campaign to modernize the bureaucracy. By the middle of last month, the Digital Agency had scrapped all 1,034 regulations governing their use, except for one…
Where are floppies used in the US government? Old mainframes are all over the place but where are floppies?
Japan just got an acute case of what a lot of western governments have - IT early adopter disease. These old systems were built using (at the time) revolutionary technology that was designed without much thought given to modularity or sun-setting.
Iirc literally the nuclear launch systems? I’ll see if I can find the article.
Edit: not anymore, but as recent as about 2019ish. Can’t imagine they’re the only ancient infrastructure still using this level of technology though. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/nuclear-weapons-floppy-disks.html
https://www.wired.com/story/san-francisco-muni-trains-floppy-disks/
I’m not sure about government but I am aware of test equipment in commercial aerospace that still use floppy disks, soooo…