- The following is content from the press release -
Kishiwada City (Mayor: Kohei Nagano), Kansai Branch of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West Corporation (Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture; Executive Officer and Branch Manager: Shigeko Ogawa; hereinafter "NTT West"), and Codomon Co. (President: Yoshinori Koike, hereinafter referred to as "Codomon") will start a demonstration experiment on February 13, 2023 (Monday), using ICT to "ensure the safety and security of children and their guardians" and "reduce the workload of childcare facilities".
1. Background and Significance of the Effort
Recently, childcare workloads have been increasing due to the shortage of manpower and the spread of the new coronavirus. Under these circumstances, there is an urgent need to promote digital transformation (DX) of childcare facilities to "ensure the safety and security of children and guardians" and "reduce the workload of childcare facilities. In terms of DX, advances in ICT have dramatically increased the reliability of biometric authentication, such as facial recognition, and its use for entry and exit from offices and factories is rapidly advancing.
Kishiwada City, NTT West, and Codomon believe that the use of face recognition technology at childcare facilities will make it possible to quickly and accurately monitor the arrival of children at preschool and contribute to "ensuring the safety and security of children and their guardians" and "reducing the workload at childcare facilities. The experiment will be conducted to verify the effectiveness of the face recognition technology in identifying children's arrival at preschool.
2. Outline of the Demonstration Experiment
This experiment will verify the effectiveness of face recognition by comparing the QR code data of the ICT service CoDMON (hereinafter referred to as CoDMON) with face recognition data, and will also verify the accuracy of face recognition for children, and establish a system to notify parents of unauthenticated preschoolers who have not reported absences by e-mail and to manage read receipts by utilizing CoDMON's attendance data and notification function. In addition, we will also use CoDMON attendance data and notification functions to establish a system for notifying parents of unauthenticated preschool children who have not reported absences and managing read receipts. Through these efforts, we will promote DX at childcare facilities and conduct trials with the aim of reducing the risk of accidents caused by human error.
Figure: Structure of the demonstration experiment (Source: NTT West)
(1) Implementation period
Monday, February 13, 2023 - Saturday, March 11, 2023
*The results of the demonstration experiment will be announced as soon as the report is completed.
(2) Place of implementation:
Kishiwada Municipal Chikiri Nursery School
*Please refrain from conducting interviews at the Chikiri Nursery in consideration of infection control measures and the privacy of the children and their parents.
(3) Division of roles
Kishiwada City: Preparation and coordination of demonstration environment
NTT West: Implementation of face recognition function, PoC (proof of concept) of notification and read receipt management function
Codomon: Operational cooperation by CoDMON
3. Future development
Through this demonstration experiment, Kishiwada City will consider introducing a system that automatically notifies parents of children who have not reported absences to the city's daycare centers in order to prevent accidents caused by human error.
We will continue to make efforts to "ensure the safety and security of children and guardians" and "reduce the burden on childcare facilities" by taking advantage of the knowledge gained from these demonstrations.
NTT West has been striving to improve the work efficiency of childcare centers and the quality of care for preschool children by introducing ICT to the preschool domain. In addition, NTT West has been providing ICT and AI-based monitoring services not only for children, but also for the elderly, street crime prevention, and a wide range of other areas. With the diversification of people's work styles, such as shorter working hours and teleworking, we expect that the demand for ICT environment improvement will increase in order for daycare centers to respond flexibly and improve operational efficiency.
With the mission of "making the environment surrounding children better through the power of technology," Codomon is developing its business to solve various social issues, and provides CoDMON, an ICT service for childcare and educational facilities, to approximately 13,000 facilities and 300 municipalities nationwide. In the day-to-day safety management at facilities, the management of arrival and departure from school and safety devices using digital technology are only aids, and the most important factor in preventing accidents is to ensure safe operation by raising awareness among staff members. We will continue to work on various measures to contribute to the safety of the environment surrounding children and to reduce the burden on teachers, such as providing examples of safety-related operations based on the "Children's Bus Transportation Safety Manual".
*The information in this news release is current as of the date of the announcement. Please be aware that the information may differ from the information as of the date of the announcement, and we ask for your understanding and attention.
