Public documents that record the government's decision-making process are, as defined by the law on managing such documents, "people's common intellectual property that underpins the foundation of democracy." The law implemented in 2011 mandates that such documents be created and preserved so citizens can trace and review the process of how government decisions were made. But recent scandals involving the sale of a government-owned tract of land in Osaka Prefecture to a school operator and the cover-up of the daily activity logs of Self-Defense Forces troops sent to Iraq in the mid-2000s have cast doubts over the mechanism controlling such documents.

Proposals have been made to reform the mechanism, and the government says it's open to amending the law. An idea reportedly considered by the government would create a new Cabinet Office position to oversee the handling of public documents across government organizations. The bottom line is that all government officials must recognize the purpose of making and keeping public documents — to keep government policies and decisions accountable to the public — and make sure that the purpose is effectively served.

The controversy over the land sale to Moritomo Gakuen at a questionable discount, in which the Finance Ministry said it had discarded its records of negotiations with the school operator over the 2016 deal, exposed the bureaucracy's sloppy management of such documents. The government responded to the criticism by revising in December its guideline for keeping administrative documents, mandating that all documents needed for reviewing the government's decision-making process be preserved at least for more than a year in principle.