Japanese business leaders and Cabinet members agreed Wednesday to map out a national strategy by the end of the year to promote information technology, setting a goal of outrunning the United States as a "super-express IT power" in five years.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori (second from left) speaks Wednesday at a joint session of a private-sector and academic panel on information technology strategy at his official residence.

The decision was reached during the second joint meeting of the 20-member private-sector and academic panel on IT strategy and the government's 22-member IT strategy headquarters, held at the Prime Minister's Official Residence.

To increase Japan's IT competitiveness through deregulation to promote e-commerce and a buildup of information and communications infrastructure for Internet-oriented superhighway, the IT strategy panel -- an advisory body to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori -- decided to set up a committee to draft a national IT strategy within two months.

During the meeting, Mori pledged that the government will submit to an extra Diet session this fall legislation for an IT basic law and legislation designed to revise existing legal obstacles to paperless business transactions for e-commerce.

The IT basic law will spell out a fundamental philosophy for the government to promote the IT revolution, including clarification of the roles to be played by the government and the private sector, Mori said.

The IT strategy panel called on the nation to concentrate efforts toward promoting competition in the Internet-oriented data communications network, deregulation in e-commerce and new rules regarding intellectual property, privacy and security. The panel also proposed the establishment of a paperless e-government and promotion of employment of workers in Internet-related businesses.

Speaking at a news conference after the session, panel head Nobuyuki Idei, chairman and CEO of Sony Corp., said the development of an Internet superhighway is of the utmost importance for Japan to bring about a new era of high economic growth through the creation of new businesses and the revitalization of existing industry.

Idei went on to express the need for the government to lay out multiyear budget programs to expand the Internet highway to beat the U.S. in the field within five years.