Japan's New Prime Minister Inaugurates Reforms

Suga Yoshihide, the new Prime Minister of Japan, had been the Chief Cabinet Secretary under Shinzo Abe for eight years. (Wiki)

Yoshihide Suga, the newly appointed Prime Minister of Japan, announced in a press conference on September 16 that he would launch two reforms in response to the pandemic: administrative reform and digitization. Claiming that the pandemic has revealed the government’s inflexibility and deficient digitization, Mr. Suga asserted his determination to tackle these long-standing challenges.

During the pandemic, the former Prime Minister Abe’s government received harsh criticism for the lack of cooperation between different ministries and departments due in large part to its vertical administrative system. The lack of cooperation became apparent when the number of COVID-19 tests remained low even at the height of the outbreak. Ichiro Kamoshita, the former Minister of the Environment and a doctor, expressed that though the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, health care centers, and government ministries are working diligently, “they are not working collectively,” resulting in low numbers of tests being conducted.

Mr. Suga affirmed his will to combat this issue along with other organizational problems within the government. At the press conference, he stated his intention to advance his regulatory reforms by “breaking down the vertical administrative system, vested interests, and the excessive inclination towards precedents.”

Mr. Suga appointed Taro Kono, a Georgetown graduate who is known as a reformist, to the Ministry of Administrative Reform and Regulatory Reform. After Mr. Suga’s proposal to hear public opinion about the real problems concerning administrative inflexibility, Mr. Kono promptly established the “Administrative Reforms Suggestion Box” on his website on September 17. 

The inefficiency of the existing computer network also surfaced during the pandemic. The distribution of cash handouts took a long time because of complicated paperwork and a confusing online application system. Furthermore, many administrative procedures and business contracts still require physical paper and personal seals as a signature. Such demands made it difficult for people to work remotely or go through the application procedure online.

To tackle this problem, Mr. Suga established the Ministry of Digital Transformation and appointed Takuya Hirai, a known authority of IT policy, as its first minister. Mr. Suga also established the Digital Agency to reform digitization policy in a unified fashion. In his effort to digitize Japan, Mr. Suga focuses on the importance of “My Numbers,” individual identification numbers issued by the government that dramatically reduce paperwork needed to identify individuals. 

These reforms received wide public reception. According to a poll by Japan Daily News, 76 percent of the participants have high hopes for Mr. Kono. Another poll from Japan Economics Newspaper shows that 86 percent of participants support the establishment of the Digital Agency. 

Mr. Suga’s two reforms in response to the pandemic have attracted a great deal of attention from the public, and their success or failure will likely define how people remember him as Prime Minister.