Japan has stepped up its push to catch up on digitization by telling a reluctant public they have to sign up for digital IDs or possibly lose access to their public health insurance.
As the naming implies, the initiative is about assigning numbers to people, but many Japanese worry the information might be misused or that their personal information might be stolen.
Some view the “My Number” effort as a breach of their right to privacy, so the system that began in 2016 has never fully caught on.
Photo: AP
Fax machines are still commonplace and many Japanese conduct much of their business in person, with cash. Some bureaucratic procedures can be done online, but many Japanese offices still require inkan, or seals, for identification, and insist on people bringing paper forms to offices.
Now the government is asking people to apply for plastic My Number cards equipped with microchips and photographs, to be linked to driver’s licenses and the public health insurance plans. Health insurance cards now in use, which lack photographs, are to be discontinued in late 2024. People would be required to use My Number cards instead.
That has drawn a backlash, with an online petition demanding a continuation of the current health cards drawing more than 100,000 signatures in a few days.
Opponents of the change say the current system has been working for decades and going digital would require extra work at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is still straining the medical system, but the reluctance to go digital extends beyond the healthcare system.
After numerous scandals over leaks and other mistakes, many Japanese distrust the government’s handling of data. They are also wary about government overreach, partly a legacy of authoritarian regimes before and during World War II.
Saeko Fujimori, who works in the music copyright business, said she is supposed to get My Number information from the people she deals with, but many balk at giving it out and no one is all that surprised she has trouble getting that information, given how unpopular it is.
“There is a microchip in it, and that means there could be fraud,” said Fujimori, who has a My Number, but does not intend to get the new card. “If a machine is reading all the information, that can lead to mistakes in the medical sector, too.”
“If this was coming from a trustworthy leadership and the economy was thriving, maybe we would think about it, but not now,” Fujimori said.
Something drastic might have to happen for people to accept such changes, just as it took a devastating defeat in World War II for Japan to transform itself into an economic powerhouse, University of Tokyo professor Hidenori Watanave said.
“There’s resistance playing out everywhere,” he said.
Japanese traditionally take pride in meticulous, handcraft-quality workmanship, and many also devote themselves to carefully keeping track of documents and neatly filing them away.
“There are too many people worried their jobs are going to disappear. These people see digitization as a negation of their past work,” Watanave said.
The process of getting an existing My Number digitized is time consuming and very analogue, it turns out. One must fill out and mail back forms sent by mail. Last month’s initial deadline was extended, but only about half of the Japanese population have a My Number, the government says.
“They keep failing in anything digital and we have no memories of successful digital transformation by the government,” said Nobi Hayashi, a consultant and technology expert.
Hayashi cited as an example Cocoa, the government’s tracing app for COVID-19, which proved unpopular and often ineffectual. He says the digital promotion effort needs to be more “vision-driven.”
“They don’t show a bigger picture, or they don’t have one,” Hayashi said.
Koichi Kurosawa, secretary-general of the National Confederation of Trade Unions, a 1 million-member grouping of labor unions, said people would be happier with digitization if it made their work easier and shorter, but it was doing just the opposite at many Japanese workplaces.
“People feel this is about allocating numbers to people the way teams have numbers on their uniforms,” he said. “They are worried it will lead to tighter surveillance.”
Yojiro Maeda, a cooperative research fellow at Nagasaki University who studies local governments, thinks digitization is needed and My Number is a step in the right direction.
“You just have to do it,” Maeda said.
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