The society that Society 5.0 aims to achieve is a data-driven society where people and things are connected, various knowledge and information are shared, and unprecedented values are achieved. In a data-driven society, both free distribution and privacy-preserving of data should be achieved. In Japan, the government's “Basic Policy for Reforms towards the Realization of Digital Society” (decided by the Cabinet on December 25th, 2020), which explains the roles and key strategies of Digital Agency, accelerates for digital transformation of whole activities in social and economic fields in order to resolve the many issues that Japan has been facing and to promote economic growth in the future.
At the same time, digitalization of society will be accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic and various confidential and privacy-violating information are going to be stored in public clouds. So, it is an urgent task to establish computing technologies which enable to execute applications on top of heterogeneous hardware and operating systems with safety, security, and trust. Environments described above should provide data distribution and information processing with attentive security and privacy protection by “Security-by-Design” and “Privacy-by-Design”.
In addition, new vulnerabilities in hardware and operating systems that have been reported in recent years become serious problem for Japan which depends on overseas’ products and services. Since computing environments constantly changing, it is difficult to resolve this problem by conventional and individual countermeasures. Research and development from the perspective of “by-Design” about the entire system and development of Japan’s unique system software that ensures safety, security, and trust are essential.
Based on the above understanding, this Target aims at qualitatively and quantitatively improving international ICT research competitiveness which is essential of ICT innovation, and at taking up Japan's international competitiveness through collaboration among researchers in the disciplines of theory (fundamental mathematics and computer science theory) and system foundation technology (algorithms, device architecture, OS, middleware, etc.). Moreover, through these achievements, it also aims to build up human resources that will contribute to “by-Design” software development.
Office for Basic Research Projects, Basic Research Promotion Division, Research Promotion Bureau