Poor Archive System of Japan

The scandals over building new schools of close allies of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Moritomo and Kake Scandals, revealed insufficiency of archive system of Japanese government. Mainichi Shimbun reported on Monday that the bureaucrats of Ministries had been discarding a half of all official e-mails at their disposal. Official documents are dealt with no efficient definition, which can cause unleashed maneuvers of bureaucrats.

Mainichi made the report based on interviews to eight Directors or Assistant Directors in six ministries, who was in charge of overseeing the treatment of e-mails in their offices. Each of them exchanges tens or a hundred of e-mails a day. They revealed that those e-mails could be discarded at their disposal and there were cases in which they personally kept e-mails, such as a record of meeting with lawmakers, not to be regarded as official document.

So, what is the definition of “official document” in Japan? Archives Management Act and Freedom of Information Act defines official document used in national executive offices as “document made and obtained by workers in their duty and kept for organizational uses.” The laws require appropriate treatment and disclosure. But, in Moritomo and Kake Scandals, bureaucrats explained that the related documents had been missed, inviting broad public criticisms.

Each of workers with Ministries has individual e-mail account. Along with digitalization of their office works, there increased the cases in which circulation of official document is not made with stamped papers, but with cc’ed e-mail. While most paper documents has been preserved for sharing, e-mails are individually controlled and possible to be arbitrarily discarded.

The government made a guideline for treatment of official documents last December, which required the workers who made or received official e-mail document to immediately forward to shared folder. But, as long as qualification of official document is left to each of the workers, documents inconvenient to them will be kept on discarded. They can tell a lie, even if they keep a document under a request to be disclosed, because no one inspects individual accounts.

Most bureaucrats in Japan recognize themselves not as public servants, but rulers of the public. A few of them realize information they deal with not as property of the people, but their own working tool. It is necessary for them to acknowledge that all the information they deal with has basically to be disclosed to the public.