Human Errors in Digital Agency

 Not being able to ignore the consecutive problems, Personal Information Protection Commission issued “administrative guidance” to Digital Agency, the organization in charge of introducing My Number identification system. The commission found that the agency was not serious enough on the wrong linkage of personal information to different person. The question is whether all the problem will be removed, even if the government can properly operate the system. Basic problem exists on the fact that digital system is operated by a lot of people, to which human errors always happen.

PIPC was established in 2016 as an independent organization in Cabinet Office for overseeing whether personal information was properly dealt with in the evolving digital communities. The commission can issue advice, recommendation or guidance. After the investigation for two months, the commission concluded that the agency was late in reporting the problems, which could even be illegal.

 

One of the purposes of introducing My Number was to register personal bank accounts for distributing governmental money for pension, child care or returning tax. While most card holders would register their bank accounts through internet, the government prepared the booths for the registration of some digital novices with cooperation of the local governments. According to Yomiuri Shimbun, the first error occurred in Toshima City, Tokyo, in July 2022. When a customer uses a computer for the registration at the local booth and leave it without logging out, next customer will register his information in the name of previous one. Such wrong registration occurred in other local booths and its total amounted to 940 cases by this June, according to Digital Agency.

 

In the case of Toshima, the staff from the agency who dealt with the case did not report to the office. That was another human error, because the organization could not share the problem immediately. After the same kind of wrong registration was reported from Fukushima this April, Digital Agency started fixing the problem and Minister in charge of Digital Affairs knew those problems in May. The agency reported those problems to PIPC as late as mid-June.

 

PIPC accused Digital Agency of its innocence on the significance of personal information being leaked, requiring further report on the situation of improvement by the end of October. Another kind troubles have been reported on the registration of integration between My Number Card with health insurance card. While the national government hopes to overhaul the system by the end of November, credibility would not be achieved soon.

 

Basically, should the registrations be made manually by each card holder? Hasn’t the agency expected human errors at all? Didn’t they shared any manual to manage such problems within the organization? No response to those questions hasn’t been made. while the system was created by the national government, the operation is actually left to the local governments, making the responsibility obscure. Those problems would also be categorized as human errors.