Before I Forget | Jiro Kokuryo, Vice-President / Professor, Faculty of Policy Management
2020.04.21
Events have been so dizzying that I fear my memory of them will become confused later on, yet I also feel there is value in preserving them as a historical record. I would like to write down a few of my experiences related to the response to the novel coronavirus. It may be best not to add too much interpretation, but I believe the lesson from this experience is the importance of preparing with a degree of pessimism amid a mix of optimism and pessimism, while not imposing measures too early, and being ready to move swiftly once a decision is made.
I still have an email log from February 3, 2020. We were discussing whether a meeting, which Keio University was scheduled to host for an APRU (Association of Pacific Rim Universities) project at a UN facility in Bangkok on February 21, could proceed. As of February 3, we had been told that holding it in Bangkok was still possible. There were discussions about participants from China being unable to attend and others who could not come due to instructions to avoid non-essential travel, but we were still exploring the possibility of an in-person meeting. However, 24 hours later, during a remote meeting on February 4, the situation across Asia had deteriorated so rapidly that the in-person meeting was quickly abandoned in favor of an online format. I think our experience of having successfully held an online meeting with the same members in the fall of 2019 helped push us in that direction. Nevertheless, it was a sudden decision. It's a strange feeling to look back now at the logs from February 5, which show us scrambling to prepare for the remote meeting, and feel as though it all happened in a distant past.
My schedule shows a record of me meeting with senior staff from information systems in the Vice-President's office on February 14. Although the meeting was for another matter, it was on this occasion that I first asked them to "begin preparations assuming a scenario where a cluster outbreak on campus forces us into a lockout." (At Keio University, we use the term "lockout" to mean closing from the inside, distinguishing it from a "lockdown.") However, I don't think anyone, including myself, truly believed it would become a reality. We ran out of time and didn't discuss it in depth, but in our subsequent intermittent exchanges, we talked about how education might somehow manage, but moving all administrative operations to be fully remote would be difficult. We were still quite relaxed.
Also on February 14, I have a log of asking Professor Okawa of the Graduate School of Media Design , with whom I have collaborated on distance learning for many years, to simulate a day when all education at Keio University goes online and to consider what would be necessary. I remember him asking, "Are we really going to do that?" and I replied, "I don't think an official decision can be made until the university council meeting on March 19, so please plan with March 19 as your target." Looking back now, we were indeed still too relaxed.
In reality, the meeting was moved up to March 16, where it was decided to push the start of classes to April 30 and to actively utilize online education. Having started our considerations around February 14 was a great help, but in retrospect, I wish we had acted sooner and with more urgency. Of course, that's all in hindsight. It's best to honestly admit and record that we were still letting our guard down on February 14. I think the tension began to mount around February 27, when Prime Minister Abe issued a statement requesting that elementary, middle, and high schools temporarily close from March 2 until their spring breaks. Our deliberations began to accelerate.
Then, New York happened. Incidentally, I am the chairman of the board for Keio Academy of New York .
The first confirmed case in New York State was not discovered until March 1, which was late. In fact, this was shortly after we had made the decision to cancel spring break to prevent students from returning to Asia (including Japan), where the risk was rising and the US had begun imposing entry restrictions, and to start summer vacation earlier instead. Even when I heard about the first case, I still thought New York was much safer. It was only nine days from that point until March 10, when the number of cases surged, a town very close to the academy was locked down, and the National Guard was sent in to assist.
On March 4, a message appeared on my chat screen noting that the number of infections in Westchester County, where the academy is located, had reached 11, and that an outbreak in the dormitories posed a significant risk. It was true that a case appearing in the dorms would entail a risk that the academy could not handle, as most students' families live overseas. I exchanged views with the Head of School and confirmed that we saw the situation in exactly the same way. I then sent an urgent email to all board members of Keio Academy of New York to deliberate and received their authorization to make the decision to close the campus facilities. Ultimately, the instruction to have students who could return home do so immediately was issued on the local evening of March 7 (a Friday). By March 13, when all students had left campus, a national emergency had been declared in the US, and major disruptions to transportation networks were beginning. I now realize that the decision, which I thought might be too early on the 7th, was in fact a last-minute save.
When closing the Keio Academy of New York campus, my thinking was, "While schools in Japan are suspending classes for about two weeks from March 2 until spring break, for Keio Academy of New York, an American school, this means losing three months of classes in March, April, and May, so a simple closure is not permissible. Transitioning to online education is essential." In my seventh year as chairman, I had never made such a top-down, heavy-handed decision, but I declared, "This is not a school closure. We will continue education online." After making the declaration, I made the unreasonable demand that the staff on the ground figure out how to do it. For the faculty and staff who had been running a boarding school—essentially the polar opposite of an educational system—it was a Copernican revolution, and I am sincerely grateful to them for going along with it. I hear the Head of School gave a truly impassioned and fiery speech to rally everyone on site.
As March wore on, the possibility of a lockdown in Japan began to be discussed as a real prospect. Even short of that, we had to assume a scenario where someone at the headquarters (Jukukan-kyoku (Keio Corporate Administration)) could become infected, forcing us to transition our core functions to remote work. We began preparing to hold an Executive Board meeting with the entire administrative office working completely from home. My schedule shows that we held practice sessions for two different types of remote meetings with the President and Vice-Presidents on the 28th and 29th.
However, simply being able to hold meetings with a web conferencing system is not enough to maintain our actual decision-making functions if even the staff cannot come to the office. Matters brought before the Executive Board only arrive after being reviewed by a wide range of departments, so unless the entire process from the drafter to the highest level is online, just holding the top-level meeting won't make things work.
What was fortunate was that a workflow system for processing approvals online was scheduled to go live in April 2020, with training having already begun in late March. We hurriedly had the President and all the Vice-Presidents learn the system. Furthermore, we decided to have staff take home devices that were initially intended to be strictly for in-office use. Using this in conjunction with a document sharing system, on April 10, Keio University held its first-ever Executive Board meeting where everyone, including the administrative office, participated online from home, and official decisions were made.
I wrote "fortunate," but the realization of an online Executive Board was only possible because we had a university-wide common authentication system and, protected by it, document sharing and web conferencing systems already in operation. I am grateful for the many years of effort by the staff who built the foundation that allowed us to deploy our corporate and academic functions online while maintaining security (albeit with caution).
While we have such an infrastructure, it is also a fact that many irrational business processes still remain within the university. The fact that online approvals are not comprehensive is because our business process reforms are still a work in progress. I also feel apologetic that many things were not ready in time for this crisis. If I may make an excuse, it seems to be human nature not to act until a crisis is imminent and the need becomes urgent, as the course of events above shows. I am renewing my resolve to use this as a lesson to advance business process reform.
So, I believe the conclusion is that it's best to make the necessary preparations so that you can move quickly when many people feel the need and want to act. It's the same as not being able to write a manuscript until the deadline is looming, isn't it?
This crisis is far from over, so I intend to remain vigilant and continue to respond accordingly.