Japan has promoted “electronic government” for more than 25 years. Yet even today, it has not succeeded in something that should be foundational: the standardized management of personal names. This is not a minor technical inconvenience. It is a structural failure that reveals why Japan’s digital government initiatives have repeatedly stalled.

The problem is often misunderstood as a lack of technology or engineering capability. In reality, the core issue lies in the absence of a coherent data governance framework, which has forced system integration to rely on individual expertise and institutional memory rather than reproducible rules.

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The Misunderstanding Around “Name Standardization”

When we say that “names are standardized and uniquely managed,” this does not mean that individuals themselves are identified solely by their names.
Rather, it means that there exists a national master dataset for personal names, and that these standardized name attributes are consistently linked to unique personal identifiers.

In Japan, however, names are defined and stored differently across systems governed by separate laws: the Family Register Act, the Basic Resident Registration Act, tax systems, social security systems, and financial institutions. Each system treats its own data as authoritative, but there is no legally defined, cross-government standard.

As a result, Japan has accumulated multiple “quasi-master” datasets. Each is internally valid within its own institutional context, yet none is defined as the authoritative reference for the nation as a whole.

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Personalization as a Structural Risk

This structural flaw is clearly reflected in statements made by experienced system engineers, such as Masanori Kusunoki （@masanork ）, who has publicly described the extreme difficulty of system-to-system data integration in Japan.

At first glance, such remarks may appear to be expressions of individual frustration. In reality, they expose a much deeper problem:
system integration in Japan is personalized.

Successful data linkage often depends on deep, tacit knowledge of historical legal interpretations, legacy system designs, and undocumented implementation decisions across domains such as family registers, resident registries, and financial systems. Without veterans who possess this institutional memory, integration projects frequently fail or produce subtle but dangerous errors.

This leads to two critical consequences:

• Non-reproducibility: Each new project must “rediscover” the same rules from scratch. Knowledge is not transferable.
• Fragility: When personnel change, understanding collapses. Maintenance teams struggle to diagnose errors they did not design.

This goes far beyond reduced efficiency or maintainability. It constitutes a national risk, particularly in emergencies, large-scale disasters, or cyber incidents, where rapid and reliable data sharing is essential.

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Why Japan Could Not Solve This for 25 Years

Japan’s political and administrative system has addressed digitalization through the accumulation of individual, domain-specific laws, rather than through overarching governance principles.

Each ministry optimized its own systems under its own legal authority. There was no incentive, and often no legal basis, to define shared data standards across domains.
As a result, coordination relied on informal adjustment, personal negotiation, and engineering heroics.

In contrast, countries such as Estonia legally fixed core principles of data governance through laws like the Public Information Act, ensuring that data definitions, interoperability, and responsibilities are determined institutionally, not personally.

Japan never established such a foundation.

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Lessons from Taiwan and South Korea

Taiwan and South Korea are also recognized as advanced e-government states, but their success is not merely technological.

Both countries have institutionalized mechanisms to prevent personalization:

• Central authorities define and enforce national data standards.
• Core registries are legally positioned as authoritative references.
• Information disclosure and reuse frameworks clarify how public data must be structured and shared.

These legal and institutional arrangements reduce dependence on individual expertise and ensure continuity across administrations and generations of systems.

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What Japan Must Legislate

To break this cycle, Japan must shift from fragmented optimization to layered data governance. A possible legal architecture would be:

Layer 1: Public Data Governance Law (Public Information Act equivalent)
A comprehensive reform of the information disclosure system, defining principles for public data management, reuse, interoperability, and accountability across government.

Layer 2: Fundamental Data Laws
Laws governing national standardization of basic data such as personal names and geographical names, establishing authoritative definitions at the national level.

Layer 3: Domain-Specific Database Laws
Existing laws such as population registry, tax, and social security acts, aligned with higher-level standards.

Layer 4: Implementing Regulations
Detailed rules defining data items, formats, and security requirements for each database.

Without Layer 1 and Layer 2, Layers 3 and 4 will continue to produce personalization and fragmentation, no matter how advanced the technology becomes.

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Conclusion

Japan’s failure to standardize even personal names is not a technical embarrassment. It is the inevitable outcome of governing data without governance.

As long as data integration depends on individual memory, experience, and goodwill, digital government will remain fragile. Only by legally anchoring data governance principles can Japan transform its electronic government from a collection of isolated systems into a resilient national infrastructure.

The time has come for Japan to move beyond individual heroics and build a resilient digital foundation through legal data governance.