Individual ID Number Broadly Unused

The Board of Audit (BOA) of Japan released the result of its survey on how the local governments use My Number system, the digital system of identification number provided for each individual by the national government. The survey found an unexpected fact that only a few kinds of information was used for enhancing administrative efficiency. It proved that My Number system can not necessarily make the relationship between the people and public office smooth. 

BOA recognizes that the government of Japan upheld the basic plan of reform for digital society in 2020, which aimed at achieving simplification, efficiency and transparency in introducing digital system in administration. Especially, it focused on the My Number system which should be fair and just for the people. Since the system was introduced with subsidy for the local government, BOA has an interest on how it is working for the users.

 

According to the survey, the My Number system has 1,258 kinds of function available for the local governments. The functions include something related to social security, such as payment for pension or allowance for families with child, taxation or disaster management. However, the most of those functions were rarely used by the local governments. Only 33 functions were used by over a half of approximately 1,800 local governments in the survey.

 

649 functions were used by less than ten percent of all the local governments and 485 functions were not used at all. The functions with low utilization include confirmation of eligibility for the National Health Insurance, payment for vaccination against infectious disease and reduction of payment for employment insurance. The system was not used at all for the public service on reduction of car insurance payment for jobless people.

 

There are various reasons why they do not use My Number system. Those include that system preference has not been fully established, that paper works are more efficient or that the system lacks necessary information. What would they do when the system does not work? Paper work. Although the system was introduced for convenience of the people and the staffs for public services, it increased inconveniences.

 

BOA found a lot of local governments were not well prepared for using data in the My Number system and the national government was not aware of the situation of those local governments. Fumio Kishida administration has a plan to abolish current health insurance card and integrate it to My Number card by the end of this year. But the administration is facing other issues which cannot be postponed, including establishing ethics over handling of political funds. It is skeptical that politics can afford to make enough effort for accelerating the administrative digitalization.

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