The recent series of scandals rocking the Abe administration has exposed the inadequacies of a guideline that governs the management of official documents by government ministries and agencies. A government committee tasked with overseeing the management of official documents should strictly review the guideline and related rules and make necessary changes, including plugging loopholes in the rules, to ensure that those documents are properly handled. It needs to tackle the job in earnest since the issue at hand concerns the people's trust in government.

The law on management and storage of official documents, which went into effect in 2011, classifies official documents into such categories as administrative documents (of government ministries and agencies), corporate documents (of independent administrative corporations) and special historical public records, and sets down principles for the preparation, arrangement, storage and disposal of the documents.

In the case of administrative documents, each ministry or agency decides on management rules under the guideline, designates officials in charge and determines the retention period of individual documents. These government organizations are required to prepare and keep documents so that their decision-making processes can be examined. They are required to strictly limit the types of documents on small matters on which such rules will not apply. The bureaucrats are obliged to adequately keep the records of email communications with other government organizations.