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On September 25, 2020, the Prime Minister attended the third meeting of the Working Group to Fundamentally Improve the My Number Social Security and Tax Number System and the Digital Infrastructure of National and Local Governments, at the Prime Minister’s Office.

At the meeting, the participants engaged in discussions on the directions for the total design of the system, reviews for the creation of legal frameworks for yomigana (syllabic Japanese characters indicating the pronunciation of Chinese characters) and other relevant issues, and measures to accelerate the unification and standardization of the systems of local governments.

Following the discussion, the Prime Minister said,

“For advancing Japan’s digitization, it is essential that the national and local governments achieve their digitization of relevant procedures and make a society in which residents can complete all sorts of procedures without visiting the respective offices and receive necessary disbursements expeditiously.  

In the field of the digitization of the Government, for some time now, the low penetration rate of My Number Cards and fragmented systems among municipalities, among other issues, have been pointed out. To address such problems, in June, when I was still Chief Cabinet Secretary, we called young experts together to form this working group, and the working group has compiled a list of 33 items so as to resolved them all at once by the end of this year.

Among those items, the unification and standardization of business systems of local governments, which we discussed today, are critical for materializing universal access to government services no matter where residents move as well as nationwide simultaneous payments of benefits. Although, up to this point, we have not set out a specific timeframe for our efforts, we intend to accelerate the relevant work, targeting five years from now, namely by the end of FY2025.

The My Number Card Social Security and Tax Number System provides a reliable means of identity verification and is hence essential in a digitalized society, and we have at last exceeded a card penetration rate of over 20%. We will accelerate our efforts to increase this so that almost every citizen will hold this card within two and a half years, namely FY2022. To that end, we will send a My Number Card application form containing a QR code once again to everyone who does not have a card. We will also make thorough efforts to raise public awareness about being able to use 5,000 yen of My Number points for shopping, and to accelerate the usage of My Number Cards as health insurance cards, which will become available from next March.

In addition, concerning the other 33 items, such as enabling the use of My Number Card functions on smart phones, enhancing the expertise of and Government involvement in the Japan Agency for Local Authority Information Systems (J-LIS), which manages the issuance of My Number Cards, promoting the private-sector use of related systems, and utilizing health data collected from people using My Number Cards, this Working Group intends to overcome bureaucratic sectionalism and formulate a roadmap for completing the necessary digital transformation in the next five years, by the end of FY2025, based on the opinions of working group experts.

At the recent Ministerial Meeting (on Digital Transformation), I gave instructions for Minister Hirai to take the lead and conduct reviews with the relevant Ministers for the establishment of an agency in charge of digital transformation. The Government will firmly advance the measures necessary for digital transformation, which will be compiled by this working group, with that agency taking the lead.”