The new government led by Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide is simply characterized by one phrase – reforming regulations. The administration gets ready to dismantle the vested interests of industries, at first, by downing rates for mobile phone users and continuing a temporary measure of the on-line medical consultation service on the permanent basis. The key, however, lies in establishment of the digital affairs agency and comprehensive revision of the IT (= information technology) Basic Act in order to cope with overall digital transformation of the nation’s economy and society.

PERSONAL DATA MAY BE CONTROLLED AND INFRINGED

A government’s office has launched preparatory works to set up the digital affairs agency. The Suga government sees establishment of the new entity as an opening to break through the vertical divisions of administrative practices and to reject routines of repeating precedents, placing it as a commanding post to change the current regulatory norms to be free from the vested interests.

The government will present to the coming Diet session next year a draft text to wholly amend the IT Basic Act as well as relevant bills to set up the new agency. It plans to fully digitalize the country’s economy and society by the fiscal year 2025, comprehensively involving in digital transformation. Behind this initiative lie competitions among the big powers for hegemony of the fourth-round of industrial revolution.

Full On-line Systems

Fundamental steps that the new government relies on are a general use of the controversial My Number Card System and an on-line processing of the administrative procedures.

As for the identification card, the administration is intended to spread the system across the nation by the year 2022, combining it with a driver’s license and a healthcare certificate to be mounted on his/her mobile phone. It will standardize various kinds of document forms of the ministries and of the local governments, dump a historic-long sealing habit and put all administrative jobs on the thoroughly digitalized schemes.

The government, taking advantage of a phrase of improved convenience, will arrange public works infrastructure to make administrative procedures more efficient, to cut personnel and cost and to encourage business entities to behave more actively.

If personal data are unified into the My Number Card scheme, the authorities will have a chance to watch arbitrarily our daily lives and behaviors. Information leakage by cyber attacks will bring citizens vast and disastrous damages. If a natural disaster hits the core digital center to fall down, lifeline services may be totally destroyed.

According to the EU’s guidelines on ethics in AI=artificial intelligence, a clause is provided that citizens shall fully manage data. It is essential to set up an independent, third party’s office so that every citizen may be assured to control his/her own data. Simultaneously it is indispensable that information and data should be dealt with from one field to another and be de-concentrated from one locality to another.

Arbitrary use of data by the authorities

Even though time and cost are less thanks to the superior expediency and radical reforms, the feat may not enrich our daily lives. The government and the business circle oblige workers to develop skills and to have a secondary and a tertiary job. We, the working population, demand that the digitalization of society should shorten working hours and bring better circumstances in parallel in which a variety of life styles are incorporated to advance.

The basic law on IT was enacted in 2000. The government was planned in 2003 to lead its jobs to an on-line basis, but failed. Divides in the digital technologies have expanded, comparing with practices of other countries. The biggest reason lies in people’s distrust in the government of Japan.

Prime Minister Suga rejected appointment of six nominees for the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), refusing to give explanations. His government makes an arbitrary use of state’s power, lacking transparency. This is the very reason why people cannot entrust their personal data to the authority.

November 3, 2020