New document management guidelines to go into force in April

February 12, 2018

Tokyo- The Japanese government is poised to put its new guidelines on the management of administrative documents into force in April, in the wake of scandals related to two private school operators.

The new guidelines were compiled in response to criticism of sloppy handling of documents associated with the heavily discounted sale of a state-owned land plot to Moritomo Gakuen, one of the two school operators, and alleged favoritism over a plan to open a new university faculty of veterinary medicine by Kake Educational Institution, headed by a friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

But some experts say that the new operational standards are problematic partly due to the lack of a system enabling external checks.

It has been found that the Finance Ministry had sorted documents related to the state land sale to Moritomo Gakuen into the category of documents whose storage period is less than one year. Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office and the education ministry are at odds over disclosed internal documents linked to the Kake issue.

The new guidelines require the storage of one year or longer in principle for administrative documents for which work to examine the decision-making processes and other details is expected to become necessary in the future.

The guidelines narrowed the range of documents that can be discarded in less than one year to seven types, including copied documents whose original versions are kept separately and those on daily work schedules and related information.

Because each government agency is allowed to decide documents that are classified as those with the shorter storage period, however, there is a possibility that important documents will be put into the category.

There is no mechanism allowing outside people to objectively check whether the classification is appropriate, experts say.

Some are critical of the new guidelines because they stipulate that email messages are treated in the same way as paper documents.

Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Party of Hope, has called for making sure that all email messages are preserved, instead of being handled as personal memos. But Abe rejected the demand, saying that email messages should be treated the same as other forms of documents. Jiji Press