I was late to Palaceside Building after stopping at Ota Ward Office in Kamata to renew my personal authentication digital certificate. For individuals it is the “digital certificate under the public personal authentication service” — not paper. It is stored in the IC chip of the Basic Resident Registration Card. So you need that card to issue or renew — yet the certificate is like a second floor with no internal stairs: separate procedure. The card lasts ten years; the certificate only three — awkward when the purpose is e-Tax for tax filing. e-Tax is handy; the certificate less so.
Do you have a Basic Resident Registration Card? Issued from 2003 — ten years this year. Introduction cost 40 billion yen; annual maintenance about 13 billion per the Ministry of Internal Affairs. National uptake about 5% — wasteful; under the Democratic government’s project reviews it was criticized as a bureaucratic retirement landing pad with excessive operating costs.
The My Number (common number) law passed this year; numbers assigned by mid-2015, use from January 2016, notification postcards then IC cards — so the old card will fade away. At Ota Ward today the clerk said, “In three years at the next renewal, certificate and card should be unified under My Number.”
The Sato cabinet once failed on a national ID number; ten years of resident registry network barely spread. My Number may cost about 270 billion yen initially — several times the registry network — with 20–30 billion annual operation. Critics say it only enriches IT vendors. After the “lost pension records” scandal, personal data management felt like bureaucracy’s nature — though my registry number seems correct. Please do not let the next My Number become a “lost number.”