Ministry of Defense Information Disclosure Prolongs decision deadline for disclosure "9 years or more"

Ministry of Defense Information Disclosure Prolonged extension of decision period for disclosure "9 years or more" 5:35 on July 31

Regarding the request for disclosure of information to the Ministry of Defense, it was found that there were a number of cases in which the document disclosure deadline was extended for a long period of time, starting in FY2018, and in some cases it was over 9 years. The Ministry of Defense cites the reason for the concentration of claims in specific departments, but experts are not limited to the Ministry of Defense, and it is necessary to consider whether the current system can solve the problem. I point out that there is.

According to the Information Disclosure Law, if there is a request for disclosure of a document, the decision is to be made within 30 days, and if it is difficult due to clerical work, the extension is limited to within 30 days, and a large amount of documents are required. In this case, as a special case, it can be extended for a "reasonable period".

Regarding the extension of the disclosure deadline using this special case, we investigated the disclosure request received by the Ministry of Defense during the five years up to last year.

According to it, a total of 2528 cases were extended using special cases, and the period of extension was the longest "3 years or more and less than 4 years" in 3 years until 2017.

After that, there were a number of cases where the extension period became long, "4 years or more", and the number of "4 years or more" was 64 in 2018 and 30 in total last year, the longest of these. In that case, there were four cases that were described as "9 years or more and less than 10 years".

Regarding the reason for the prolonged period, the Ministry of Defense's Office of Documents Administration raised the background that the number of requests for disclosure of information is increasing and that the requests may be concentrated in specific departments. , The disclosure decision has been made earlier than the extended period.”

Expert "Prolonged trends are not limited to the Ministry of Defense"

Yukiko Miki, Chairman of the NPO, Information Disclosure Clearing House, said, "The actual situation is such that the decision period that was assumed when the Information Disclosure Law was enacted is considerably exceeded, and from the requester's side, the system It has been about 20 years since the Information Disclosure Law came into force, and the reason for the longevity and the current mechanism are not limited to the Ministry of Defense. It is necessary to consider whether it can be solved by."