It is essential to convey directives precisely within an organization and implement them promptly as well as to deal with public disclosure properly. The Defense Ministry should accelerate preparation of arrangements needed to achieve these goals.
In connection with the issue of the Ground Self-Defense Force's daily activity logs during a peacekeeping mission to Iraq, which were found after their existence had been denied, the ministry has released investigation results determining that inappropriate handling of clerical work, among other factors, was to blame for the lapse.
Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said that "there was no organized cover-up." Yet the ministry has no alternative but to face criticism over its continued insincere response to the issue. It is not surprising that the ministry has punished 17 officials, including its administrative vice minister.
The issue can be traced back to February last year when then Defense Minister Tomomi Inada answered in the Diet that the logs did not exist, a statement she made without conducting a sufficient investigation. Inada thereafter directed ministry officials to search for the logs.
According to the investigation report, the directive from Inada was not shared with all ministry organizations. The GSDF Ground Research and Development Command (now the Training Evaluation Research and Development Command), which discovered the logs in question in March last year, did not recognize that the discovery should be reported. The official in charge of dealing with requests for public disclosure also responded without knowledge that the logs had been discovered.
If Inada had answered that the matter was "under investigation" in the Diet in the first place, it would not have evolved into a political issue. The directive issued with no deadline set was deplorably ambiguous.
The handling of the matter by her subordinates was also sloppy. Cooperation between ministry officials was poor, and they did not do enough to communicate with each other.
Centralized supervision vital
The Ground Research and Development Command, which discovered the logs, reported it to the Ground Staff Office in January this year, but the matter was not reported to Onodera and the administrative vice minister until late March. That the report was not submitted to them immediately must be taken seriously.
Confusion at the ministry must be kept from having an adverse effect on Japan's national security.
It has been pointed out that there was poor communication between ministry bureaucrats and self-defense officers. Reexamination of the organizational culture of the Defense Ministry and the Self-Defense Forces is also indispensable.
Requests filed with the ministry for public disclosure amount to about 5,000 annually. It is imperative to establish a system for integrated management and efficient public disclosure of documents and data held by the ministry's various departments.
Management of public documents has emerged as an issue to be tackled by the whole Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Finance Ministry, for instance, altered documents approving a land sale to the Moritomo Gakuen school operator.
New document management rules have been applied since April. The new rules call for preserving documents related to decision-making processes for at least one year in principle. Compilation of records on contact with the private sector is also called for. The rules must be applied consistently.
The government will shortly come up with measures to bolster management of public documents. It is necessary to supervise the management situation of documents beyond the boundaries of government ministries and agencies.
The measures should be studied from a comprehensive perspective, including revision of the Public Records and Archives Management Law.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, May 25, 2018)
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