Japan Press Weekly

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2015 June 3 - 9 TOP3 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Pension data entry staff are outsourced workers

It was found that the Japan Pension Service, currently under fire for the leak of personal data, has been outsourcing data entry work and allowing temporary workers to have access to the shared server where large volumes of personal information are stored. Moreover, the system’s president did not know this.

Grilled by Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Representatives Horiuchi Terufumi, Japan Pension Service President Mizushima Toichiro admitted to being unaware of the situation by saying, “I didn’t know data entry workers were all temporary staff,” at a House welfare committee meeting on June 3.

Horiuchi said, “Private consignment of such sensitive work makes it difficult to detect mistakes,” and demanded that the contracting-out of data entry work be immediately stopped.

The JCP lawmaker also pointed at the illegal use of temporary workers in the data entry positions that the public institution has been outsourcing.

A company awarded the contract from the institution has been using temporary workers sent from a staffing agency to do the pension data entry work. However, this agency has neither submitted a mandatory notification of the operations of its staffing business nor had the required permission under the Worker Dispatch Law. Such a business entity does not even exist at its publicly-announced address.

Welfare and Labor Minister Shiozaki Yasuhisa said, “The ministry will investigate the situation.”

Horiuchi said, “The latest data leak incident has exposed the vulnerability of the ‘My Number’ system,” and demanded that the planned start of the system (January 2016) be postponed.

Past related article:
> ‘My Number’ system would deny people’s right to work [May 15, 2015]
> Concerns over ‘My Number’ system increasing among SMEs [May 6, 2015]
> Gov’t should give up use of ‘My Number’ system infringing on people’s human rights [March 2, 2015]