TOKYO, May 15, 2023—It was bound to happen, and it happened: More than 7,000 Japanese individuals who have signed on to the government’s ‘My Number’ individual ID card system had their personal information, such as birth and residence, mixed up with other cardholders’ information. And of the total of 7,312 foulups, five persons received different persons’ personal information, instead of their own, during he October 2021-November 2022 period, the government confirmed May 12, saying that the different persons’ information was perused by the five persons. The errors resulted from input mistakes committed by local government officials, Health and Welfare minister Nobukatsu Kato said at a news conference, as quoted by the Japanese media.
By the 2024 autumn, the Japanese government is scheduled to abolish the National Health Insurance certificate card system and consolidate the NHI service with the My Number card system as a means of tracking taxpayer information and government administrative cost saving — which it is campaigning as for ‘Japanese people’s convenience.’ The government is luring Japanese taxpayers to sign on to the My Number card system by offering 20,000 yen ($150) equivalent of cardholder point incentives to be used for consumption.
As of May 7, 96.7 million valid applications were filed with the government for the My Number card, or 76.8 percent of the Japanese population of 129 million, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Of the 76.8 million filed, the government issued 87.8 million My Number cards, representing 69.8 percent of the population.
The NHI policy card was consolidated into My Number card a few years ago on a cardholder volunteer basis, and since then, the consolidated card has been wreaked with troubles, such as not being able to be used as the NHI card and dispensing of different medicine from prescriptions.
The government asked Fujitsu Inc. and Fujitsu Japan Inc. May 8 to investigate their system accuracy following intermittent troubles relating to the card system.
MIC minister Takeaki Matsumoto told a regular news conference May 12 that it’s not MIC’s jurisdiction about the problem of patients at certain hospitals had their personal information mixed up with other people’s. It’s ‘an issue of data input by the insurer that manages health insurance’ and not of MIC — thus he started passing on his responsibility to other government and municipal entities!
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Insight Into the Future