Photo/Illutration A card reader set up at the reception desk of a hospital (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The My Number system may be one of the biggest white elephants the government has ever put together, a Board of Audit study showed on May 15.

The central government has spent about 1.17 trillion yen ($7.6 billion) since fiscal 2013, when preparations for the program began, to give every individual in Japan a 12-digit ID number.

Officials touted the My Number program, officially called Individual Number system, as a way to increase efficiency in governmental paperwork and improve convenience for residents.

But the Board of Audit study found that more than half of local governments used only 33, or 3 percent, of the 1,258 total functions provided by the My Number system.

There were 485 functions, or 39 percent of the total, that no local government used.

The study found fault on various sides.

Many local governments do not have computer systems in place to use all the functions offered. But the Board of Audit also criticized the Digital Agency for improper handling as the lead government organ for the system.

In addition to functions not used by a single local government, the Board of Audit found 649 functions that were being used by less than 10 percent of the 1,800 or so local governments covered in the study.

The Board of Audit also sent questionnaires to all municipal governments in 11 randomly selected prefectures, including Kanagawa, Aichi, Hyogo, Hiroshima and Fukuoka, to find out why the use of the My Number system was so low.

Many of the municipal governments said they had not yet established a proper environment to use the computer system. Others said the old-fashioned way of asking residents to submit paper documents along with their applications proved more efficient.

The local governments reached out to different government agencies to receive information through the My Number system, but some said the agencies did not always have the most current information of residents.

As a result, the burden on residents that the My Number system should have removed remains in place.

For example, after leaving their companies, retired employees must submit applications to their local government to switch health insurance programs.

But the Board of Audit study found that 2.2 million retirees in fiscal 2022 were asked to submit paper documents along with their applications rather than go through the My Number system.

The study also found that patients with rare illnesses had to pay for documents showing how much taxes they paid and submit these forms with applications for benefits they were entitled to.

The My Number system is supposed to allow local governments to locate such tax information through the computer system.

The Board of Audit concluded there were limits to what local governments could do to improve use of the system.

It called on the Digital Agency and other relevant government organs to rectify the situation since there were also problems in how the central government put together the system.

In a statement issued on May 15, the Digital Agency said it seriously accepted the results of the Board of Audit study and would provide support to promote use of the My Number system.

(This article was written by Eiji Zakoda, Kentaro Uechi and Ayaka Kibi.)

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