The January 26th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article that was entirely about practical issues involved in running a prefectural Jinjachō. It was written by one of the staff at Okayama Jinjachō, and if I am remembering correctly it was the latest in a series reporting on their move to a fully digital system.
This article reported on the successful shift to completely digital communication between the Jinjachō and the local groups within it. It seems that quite a lot of administration happens this way: individual jinja communicate with the local groups, which communicate with the Jinjachō, which communicate with Jinja Honchō. Moving the communication online had a lot of advantages, saving money and time at the Jinjachō, and making it much easier to transfer past records to new people when the leadership changes in the local groups. (They do not have offices, and so all the administration takes place at a jinja, as I understand it. Thus, if the leadership changes, the office moves, and moving all the information as well is something that did not, it seems, always happen.)
The Jinjachō is paying for an online workflow system (Collaboflow), which means that the local groups can store documents in the cloud, and that they are automatically sorted and filed. This takes quite a lot of the load off them. There are still a few things that need to be physical. Sometimes a signature or seal stamp is required, and sometimes the Jinjachō is distributing physical leaflets to the jinja, for example. However, they are looking at moving as much of that online as possible.
The Jinjachō seems pleased with it, and the article urges other Jinjachō to make the same kind of shift. They do emphasise the need to change over slowly — it took them about six months — but all of the local groups were, in the end, able to deal with things online. It seems that it is not always the formal leader who handles it, because the head of the local group is allowed to designate someone else (who understands these new-fangled machines) as the contact person. I would not be at all surprised if this were the head’s child in many cases. (Someone in their fifties, most likely.)
The article strongly suggests that Okayama Prefecture is ahead of the game on this question, but now that one Jinjachō has done it, I would expect others to follow fairly quickly. There might be issues with moving some parts of Shinto online, but this sort of administration is no problem.