Japan to revise handling of administrative documents

August 27, 2017

TOKYO- Hit by a series of controversies involving administrative documents, the Japanese government will later this month launch a full-fledged debate on revising the management of such documents.

The focus of the debate will be on how much the government can limit the arbitrary discarding of administrative documents that should be kept, a point raised by controversies in parliament involving public documents.

To tackle arbitrary discarding, the government must consider ways to reduce the number of documents with storage periods shorter than one year, which government agencies can get rid of at their own discretion.

According to guidelines on administrative documents management, created in 2011, government agencies sort documents into five categories of storage period, from one year to 30 years, in line with their importance.

Documents left out of these categories are kept for less than one year. Government agencies don't have to keep records on their creation and destruction.

Each agency has its own classification rules under the guidelines.

On Wednesday, the Cabinet Office's commission on the management of public documents will have a meeting to set the course of revisions.

The commission, led by Katsuya Uga of the University of Tokyo's Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, will study specific requirements for documents to be kept for less than one year, hoping to tweak the guidelines by the end of this year at the earliest, informed sources said.

The expected revisions follow a series of controversies in parliament during the ordinary session that ended in June.

On the sale of a land plot owned by the government to Moritomo Gakuen, an Osaka-based school operator, at a huge discount, the Finance Ministry told parliament that its records on the negotiation had been destroyed.

In a scandal that led to the resignation of the defense minister, Tomomi Inada, last month, the Defense Ministry said it had discarded daily activity logs from Ground Self-Defense Force engineering troops taking part in the U.N. peacekeeping operation in South Sudan. It was later revealed, however, that the reports still exist.

The reports include descriptions of armed conflicts in the conflict-torn African nation that do not meet government-set conditions for the SDF's participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations abroad.

Both cases involved documents that agencies can destroy within one year.

The Defense Ministry came close to admitting its problematic handling of the documents by voluntarily changing its own rules to store daily logs for 10 years, after a special investigation by its Inspector General's Office of Legal Compliance into the cover-up.

Another item in the Cabinet Office commission's discussions will be how to handle notes made by government officials.

In allegations of favoritism by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over a plan to open a new university department of veterinary medicine by a friend, a series of notes said to have been created by education ministry officials as records of communication with top government officials came to light.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has stated that a clear line should be drawn between administrative documents and notes.

The line is not clear now. Under the public records and archives management law, administrative documents are defined merely as "documents that the staff of administrative agencies create as part of their duties and are used as an organization."

One idea the government is considering is setting up a post at each government agency to decide which documents should be kept, according to the sources.

An education ministry official sounded skeptical about the idea, though. "If you don't have to disclose personal notes, all documents would be treated as personal notes," the official said.

The remark suggests that a revision to the guidelines may jeopardize the spirit of information disclosure, depending on how it is carried out. Jiji Press