Public documents must be designed to meet requirements for verification by keeping a record of decision-making processes in them. To this end, the awareness of observing definite rules must be ensured throughout administrative organizations.
In connection with the issue of the sale of state-owned land to school operator Moritomo Gakuen, the Finance Ministry deleted significant portions from the documents on the approval of the land sale -- portions that mentioned the grounds for policy decisions, among others. Who got involved in the falsification and for what purposes? It is necessary to continue elucidation of the background and motive behind this malfeasance.
At the same time, it is essential to thoroughly reform the document administration system.
The Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has faced a series of scandals in relation to administrative documents. In connection with the issue of daily reports on the Self-Defense Forces' U.N. peacekeeping operations in South Sudan, Defense Minister Tomomi Inada was forced to resign.
Abe has expressed determination to tackle the issue, saying, "The government will make an overall effort to reexamine the way the public document administration system should be." Unless lost public confidence is restored, whether the government will be able to carry out its policies is dubious. Abe should display leadership in this regard.
The Cabinet Office's expert panel on administration of public documents approved new management guidelines in late December.
The new guidelines call for storing documents needed for verification of policy-decision processes for "one year or longer" in principle. The range of documents that are allowed to be abandoned in "less than one year" has been narrowed. The guidelines also call for producing documents on important internal meetings and records of negotiations with the private sector, among others.
Steady implementation crucial
In line with the guidelines, government ministries and agencies will establish their own new document administration rules and implement them from April. Steady implementation of the new rules is called for.
In connection with the Moritomo Gakuen scandal, the Finance Ministry initially explained it had abandoned the negotiation records as those requiring preservation for less than one year. Such an excuse could be prevented under the new rules.
An important thing is for each public servant to become aware of their grave responsibility and proceed with performing their administrative services adequately and efficiently. Writing this process into documents and thus ensuring their accountability to the people is indispensable to sound democracy.
Concerning the handling of approval documents, Abe has instructed his Cabinet ministers to promote an electronic approval system. This recording method could promote paperless administration and contribute also to preventing irregularities because rewriting is left on record. Hence the method must become prevalent.
The opinion has been expressed within the Liberal Democratic Party that provisions stipulating punishment for altering public documents should be included in the Public Records Management Law.
The Penal Code already lists the crime of falsification of public documents. Some people point out that unnecessarily adding punitive provisions and further complicating the procedure for compilation of public documents may encourage a trend of not leaving records at all.
One idea could be to put priority on making sure the new rules take root first.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, March 30, 2018)
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