Another case of misconduct has arisen to shake trust in the pension system. Why does the Japan Pension Service repeatedly commit faults to this degree?
It has been found out that there were input errors and other irregularities committed by an information processing company that had been commissioned by JPS to enter personal data.
This has resulted in a decrease in pension payments from the amounts that should have been paid to 104,000 people in February. The reductions totaled 2.013 billion yen. Meanwhile, 45,000 people were overpaid by a total of 80 million yen.
Figures for the amount of income taxes, which differed from the correctly calculated sums, were deducted due to such reasons as erroneous descriptions and failure to input family dependents' information.
The latest case signifies failure to properly pay public pension benefits that support people's lives in their old age. This situation can affect the basis of the system.
JPS commissioned the company in question to enter information on about 5.28 million people. According to the firm's initial explanations, the work was supposed to be done by 800 personnel. However, the company had only secured a few dozen more than 100.
The company's data entry task should have been carried out manually, but it did not follow that procedure. The data was scanned by machine instead.
To make matters worse, the company was found to have violated a contract involved, subcontracting a Chinese firm to enter data on about 5 million people. The main contract banned subcontracting and also limited the data entry workplaces to domestic locations.
Private information possessed by public institutions must be strictly managed. This is also true with companies to which data-related tasks are outsourced. It is indispensable for those companies to have a sense of responsibility as part of publicly sanctioned work and to implement thorough security measures.
Thoroughly prevent repeat
There is no guarantee that a company subcontracted to carry out data entry work will abide by rules on how to treat pertinent information. The original contractor has claimed that the data entered by the Chinese company was limited to subscribers' names and kana characters indicating their pronunciation. It said that no data has been leaked. However, the fact remains that a massive amount of information has been improperly handled. This has stirred up great anxiety among the public.
JPS should seriously reflect on its laxity in choosing and controlling the company to which its work had been outsourced.
There is no overlooking JPS's actions taken after finding that the data had been erroneously entered and that the work had been outsourced to the Chinese company. JPS kept the contract intact and even handed over additional data to the original contractor, on the grounds that it had been unable to find a firm that could replace it.
JPS' lack of a sense of crisis is just appalling.
JPS intends to set up an investigative organ, thereby reconsidering its method for selecting a company to which work is outsourced as well as its system for overseeing such a firm. JPS has been making progress in outsourcing portions of its work to improve operational efficiency. However, it is necessary to reconsider the scope of work that could be outsourced.
JPS has been embroiled in a succession of misconduct cases even after taking over the work that had been conducted by the now-defunct Social Insurance Agency. They include a leak of a massive amount of personal information and failure to pay an enormous amount of pension benefits. The latest case has also affected another plan; cooperation with local governments in simplifying administrative procedures through the use of the so-called My Number system will be postponed once again.
There seems to be a situation in which the people find JPS hopeless. Still, people have no choice but to leave their important pension benefits to the care of JPS. This time, JPS must take thorough measures to ensure there is no repeat of the latest case.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, March 28, 2018)
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