Photo/Illutration Internal affairs minister Takeaki Matsumoto on April 4 (Yoshikatsu Nakajima)

The government is well on its way to reaching its goal of everybody in Japan being registered under the My Number Card system, formally known as the Individual Number Card, to make a range of administrative procedures easier.

Internal affairs minister Takeaki Matsumoto said April 4 that about 96.14 million people had applied for the card as of the end of March. The figure is equivalent to 76.3 percent of the population.

The central government had set a goal of “almost everybody in Japan having the card” by the end of March.

In that sense, Matsumoto said the goal had been reached.

But it takes one to two months to obtain the card after making the initial application.

As of the end of March, 84.4 million cards had been issued, covering 67 percent of the population.

Issuance of the My Number Card started in January 2016.

The COVID-19 pandemic that erupted in early 2020 revealed the slowness of administrative digitalization.

So, in September of that year, Yoshihide Suga, the prime minister at the time, set a goal of speeding things up.

Later, the central government started a program to grant “points” to those who apply for the card to encourage people to register.

Last October, the government announced it would abolish the current health insurance card and integrate the function with the My Number Card in fall 2024.

This development led to a surge of new applications.

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