MOF, Defense Ministry Join Hearings over Documents

June 11, 2018

Tokyo- A Japanese government-appointed panel conducted hearings with the Ministry of Finance and the Defense Ministry on Monday over their problematic management of public documents.

At a meeting of a panel of experts held by the Cabinet Office in Tokyo, the MOF, which tampered with documents on a controversial discount sale of state land, and the Defense Ministry, whose management of daily reports by Self-Defense Forces troops on a peacekeeping mission in South Sudan became an issue, explained the results of in-house probes conducted earlier.

Asked about efforts to reform the awareness of government workers and the efficiency of measures to prevent any recurrence of problems, the Defense Ministry said that it will digitize daily logs and unify saved files.

The MOF said that it will get fresh approval if any corrections are needed for documents on which final decisions have been made and consider offering related training for senior officials.

"We take the lost trust for public documents and public administration extremely seriously," Hiroshi Kajiyama, state minister in charge of managing public documents, said during the panel meeting. "We'll make every effort" to realize measures against any recurrence of problems at an early date, Kajiyama said.

At a meeting on Tuesday last week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe instructed cabinet ministers to review their public document management. Jiji Press