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These also lead to several problems for administrative execution procedure. These overlapped administrative execution procedures make the procedure complicated. The interpretation of the "address," "household," and "householder," among several administrative affairs could be un-unified. The residents might provide the notification for the affairs which might directly affect on their lives and might not provide all the notifications. This may make the birth of the situation that some registrations do not have same information for the same affairs.
Of course, municipalities have made efforts to solve these problems by creating same windows for the several notifications and similar formats for the notifications. However, because the several laws have different systems for their notifications, it is clear that municipalities cannot perfectly solve the problems. For example, when a resident comes to a municipality and change the address in the municipality, the resident must provide the entrance notification based on Article 22, Paragraph 1 of the Resident Registration Law (Law No. 218 in 1951) and the notification of the address change of the insured person based on Article 12, Paragraph 1 of the Government Pension Plan Law within 14 days, and the residents must provide qualification notification as the insured person based on Article 9, Paragraph 1 of the National Health Insurance Law within 10 days. Moreover, the document for transferring based on the food management law is valid for only 60 days.
Second, the system for resident registration has several following problems.
Municipalities must keep several registrations such as resident registration, national health insurance, government pension plan, and some other public services, based on the notifications and investigations. This makes the administrative works in municipalities complicated and prevents the unitary grasping of the residents information from being unified. Reasons for un-unified information among several registrations can be found in the un-accurate notification of the residents and in un-unification of the registration system of the municipalities. Current resident registration cannot be utilized for the other administrative registration. Every investigation for residents' condition is often done for its own purpose. The fruits of the investigation are not often used for the other administrative registrations. For example, although the additional paragraph 12 of Election Law (Law No.100 in 1950) says "The Election Administrative Committee shall make the voter registration list based on the Registration Cards defined by the Residents Registration Law (Law No.218 in 1951) and must register un-registered residents every year or every occasions for elections," this system has not worked yet.
Moreover, when municipalities execute administrative works for a residence tax, the municipalities do not connect enough the overlapped needed information for resident registrations and the voters list.
In addition, although the Board of Education in municipalities must make a school register for pupils living in the municipality, this system does not work for the intension of the law in the current situation that concrete utilizing methods and necessity for the school register compared to the needed efforts and expense to always manage the register accurate. Also, mayors must make the individual cards for tuberculosis inspection and vaccination registration; however, the formats for these affairs are not flexible at all and municipalities cannot rationally and efficiently executes these affairs with flexibility. This leads to the problem that the individual cards for tuberculosis inspection and vaccination registration cannot be easily utilized for their original purposes.
Based on these current Resident Registration System's situations, this committee requests Japanese government to create a new Resident Registration System which has following characteristics. Japanese nationals desire that the government improves public services provided at municipality windows and makes the public services useful for the people. The Resident Registration System needs to respond to these desires, and at the same time must be efficient, useful, and flexible enough for municipalities to execute the needed administrative works.
Based on these thoughts, this committee concludes that it is necessary to rationalize the Resident Registration System for following primary policies.
1. The government needs to create new Resident Registration System which should be the base for several administrative registrations.
The government needs to newly establish the Basic Resident Registration System which should be the primary system for administrative works and unify resident cards, registrations of insured persons for National Health Insurance, registrations of insured persons for Government Pension Plan, and registrations for food distributions.
This committee has discussed whether the Basic Resident Registration should regard an individual or a household as a basic unit for registration. The conclusion was that although both systems have both good points and bad points, an individual should be a basic unit for registration for following reasons. Current administrative works deal with an individual. Individual system fits for the current trend for automatic execution of the administrative works. The individual system could be useful for resident handbook system. However, the household system might be appropriate for some municipalities for their administrative efficiency.
Based on these thoughts, the Basic Resident Registration basically must be made for individual units and must be filed for household units. The formats for the Basic Resident Registration are not identified.
2. Several notifications must be unified as much as possible.
Because the Basic Resident Registration System unifies several administrative registrations, the notifications for the administrative registrations which have same information as the Basic Resident Registration System must be unified as much as possible. The other notifications also needed to be unified as possible. These unifications are demanded to lighten the residents' burdens and to make the administrative works at municipalities rational and efficient.
3. In order to make the Basic Resident Registration bases for several administrative works, the government needs to try to always find errors of the system and correct them, and needs to investigate the real situation of the residents regularly every year.
It goes without saying that the Basic Resident Registration always needs to keep its accuracy in order to make the Basic Resident Registration used base for several administrative works. Because the several notifications for the Basic Resident Registration are unified and it is used for several administrative affairs, the needed level of accuracy must be expected to be much higher than current system. Moreover, in order to improve the level of accuracy, when municipalities find any error in the information in the Basic Resident Registration, they need to quickly correct or so. In addition, municipalities are needed to investigate the real situation of the residents and to quickly correct the information in the Basic Resident Registration. This investigation done for the Basic Resident Registration had better unify other investigations for other several administrative affairs.
4. The government is ordered to enact principle law for the Resident Registrations.
The government is ordered to establish the Basic Resident Registration system and to unify several Resident Registrations rules currently shown in each individual law.
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<3> The large scale amendments thereafter
A. Amendment in 1985
In 1969, the Basic Resident Registration Law is perfectly linked to the voters list. In 1971, the information of qualification for allowance for dependent children is added as necessary Resident Registration information. The "Partial Amendment Law for the Basic Resident Registration Law" (Law No. 76 in 1985), which became active on June 1, 1986, brings evolutional changes of basic parts of the Basic Resident Registration Law. This amendment intended to follow the developments of computer technologies and improved level of the privacy protection consciousness.
The summary of this amendment Law can be found in the following three points. (1) The responsibilities of mayors to appropriately manage the registered information on the registration are clarifies. (2) The amendment allows mayors to make copies of resident cards by the magnetic tapes and to regard the copies as the original resident cards. (3) The mayors are regulated not to lose basic fundamental rights of residents by inspection of resident cards and issuing of a copy of a resident card, identification documents for issues for registered cards, and a copy of an additional card to one's family registration. The amendment established penal regulations for violations for these regulations.
B. Amendment in 1999
Thereafter, with the enactment of the Nursing Care Insurance Law in 1997, the information for the qualification of insured person for the nursing care insurance was added as a registered issuance on registration cards. The "Partial Amendment Law for the Basic Resident Registration Law" (Law No. 133 in 1999), most parts of which became active on August 5, 2002, initiated the Basic Resident Registration Network System as a common system among local governments.
Other administrative affairs are added to the original administrative affairs to utilize the Basic Resident Registration Network System by the "Law concerning Preparation of Related Laws for enforcing Online Administrative Procedures Law" (Law No. 152 in 2002). The "Law concerning Digital Signature certification of Local Public Entity" (Law No. 153 in 2002) orders the municipalities to provide public individual certification services by using this system.
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