The CRYPTREC Advisory Committee, which meets jointly with the Ministry of InternalAffairs and Communication, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, publiclyinvited ciphers, evaluated them objectively, and decided and publicized, on February20, 2003, a list of ciphers that should be recommended for use in the procurement of “e-Government” ( e-Government Recommended Ciphers List ). Based on this decision, the administrative-information-related Division Managersliaison meeting approved, on February 28, 2003, the “ Policy for the use of ciphers tobe used for information system procurement of each agency (in Japanese), ” in which it was clearlystated that each agency must use the ciphers enumerated in the e-Government RecommendedCiphers List, as much as possible, when they use ciphers in constructing an informationsystem.