Photo/Illutration The Digital Agency received administrative guidance. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

An administrative commission instructed the Digital Agency to improve measures to verify IDs and protect personal information after bank account data for hundreds of people were mistakenly registered under the My Number system.

“We take this seriously and will try to prevent a recurrence,” an agency official told a news conference on Sept. 20.

The Personal Information Protection Commission earlier in the day gave the administrative guidance directive to the agency, which is in charge of the law governing the My Number personal identification system.

The directive was issued over 940 cases in which information about bank accounts that receive public money, such as cash handouts, was linked to the My Numbers of different individuals. This allowed names, account numbers and other personal information to be viewed by other people.

The mix-ups occurred through errors in registering information at municipal government offices.

But the Personal Information Protection Commission said Digital Agency officials lacked awareness of the importance of protecting personal information and failed to take adequate measures to prevent leakage of such data.

It said the officials failed to appropriately share information because they thought municipal governments were responsible for the mix-ups.

Taro Kono, who heads the agency as minister for digital transformation, and other senior agency officials were informed that bank account information was wrongly registered in May, 10 months after the first case was reported to the agency by a municipal government.

The commission called on the agency to report on its responses by the end of October.

“We want to more thoroughly adopt the perspective of protecting personal information when designing new institutions and systems,” the agency official said.

The administrative guidance was based on the law on the My Number system and the Personal Information Protection Law.

The commission said the legal violations involved did not warrant a more serious administrative punishment.

In addition to the 940 cases in which strangers’ bank account information was registered, tens of thousands of My Numbers, such as those of children, have been linked to bank accounts held by other family members.

Data mix-ups involving My Numbers and My Number Cards have also led to leakage of personal information concerning public pensions and health insurance cards.

The commission also issued an administrative guidance to the National Tax Agency on Sept. 20 over a tax office’s mistake in registering information of a bank account with a My Number.

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