TOKYO, Aug. 5, 2023—Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister, expressed his resolve Aug. 4 to have all Japanese residents to carry the national ID card called the My Number card in the next five years, and his determination met more than a lukewarm response from the usually subservient Japanese media – most ignored him by not reporting the evening prime time news conference.
Kishida’s administration has been under increasing heat to abolish the ID system after numerous foulups of card holder privacy raising public skepticisms about the system’s security and the government’s capability at managing it. In some cases reported by Japanese media, cardholders’ healthcare and other residential and other personal information was put on strangers’ cards.
The My Number card replaces the National Health Insurance (NHI) card, which all Japanese residents essentially carry for receiving healthcare services. In reality, however, many medical establishments, particularly individually-run clinics, do not accept the My Number card and demand that patients present NHI cards.
The digital affairs minister, Taro Kono, earlier this year said the government would cease using the NHI card in a year. A growing number of the public, increasingly concerned about the errors, have begun cancelling the card out of worries that the mishaps might become more serious as the card eventually is expected to embrace personal tax, banking and securities, and other varieties of information. Public distrust of the card system surged when Kono said earlier that the government would abolish the driver’s license replacing it with My Number.
At the news conference, Kishida reiterated that his government would not change the policy of replacing the NHI card with the My Number card but that he would extend the validity of a quasi-My Number card – which will bear the properties of the NHI card – to be issued to individuals that do not hold the My Number card to as long as 5 years.
Issuing the quasi-My Number card is expected to require another huge budget appropriation since it is effectively an all-new system. It means a fresh administrative burden not only to central government entities but probably more to municipalities that have been screaming for labor and financial resources for My Number-related government programs having been implemented to date, including pass-through government incentive and subsidy payments to applicants.
By not announcing anything new at all at the news conference, the prime minister, whose popular support has been slipping steadily and now barely above 30 percent, announced that he’s done enough with My Number as he’s not going to be around too long.
Oh, and he’s not the first Japanese leader to call it quits on a national taxpayer number system. While his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, was around in 2016, the government quietly phased out (but not legally repealed) what was called the Basic Resident Registry.
In 2016, only 1 out of 20 Japanese residents held the BRR. The BRR began in 2002 and by the end of 2015, 9.2 million BRR cards had been issued. The administrative cost at the time was estimated at $10 billion.
My Number cards were issued to slightly more than 7/10th of the Japanese population of 215 million as of earlier 2023. The administrative cost is not known, though it is believed to be several times more than the BRR cost.
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