During the recent National Administrative Reforms Conference, the Executive Yuan proposed an eight-point action strategy. The media focus, however, was on speculation about a possible Cabinet reshuffle after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave the Executive Yuan a tongue-lashing over its inefficiency. Obviously, Chen's criticism -- meant to raise administrative efficiency -- has been used to generate media hype. His four-point recipe for improving efficiency may become another fruitless word game.
The government has faced difficulties at every step, given the opposition's lack of cooperation and the passive resistance of civil servants. On top of this came the politicized media hype on dissatisfaction with the government.
The problem is that the difficult situation faced by the government is no excuse for its inefficiency. The people expected the government to banish the impotence and corruption that characterized its predecessors' rule and to create a vision for raising Taiwan's competitiveness. The people care about results, not the process. Chen's scathing remarks were made in the hope of im-proving overall efficiency,not as a signal that a reshuffle was imminent. Those who painted political motivations into Chen's remarks may have done so out of distrust of Chen.
The Executive Yuan's poor efficiency is due as much to a lack of coordination between agencies as it is the poor leadership of certain ministers and agency chiefs. It is also due to the inability of the administration to communicate and coordinate between the DPP, the executive branch and the legislative branch, which has rendered operations ineffectual and reduced crisis prevention and management to a mere shifting of responsibilities. It is no wonder that it has been called a "snail government."
Government coordination and political maneuvers cannot depend on setting up all kinds of task forces. The most important thing is to effectively handle the missions of these task forces. The key to this is to establish defactionalized and decompartmentalized organizational models. The DPP's political culture, however, has been fraught with factionalism and individualism, making it difficult for the state machine to operate smoothly. When it comes to decision-making, it is far too easy for everyone to go his or her own way. As long as this problem is unresolved, governance will be fraught with contradictions and will be barely capable of achieving anything.
Both in talent or demeanor, the current Cabinet members are superior to their predecessors. So why has the government's performance fallen so far behind? Chen and the DPP should get to the root of the problems besetting his administration and apply the right antidotes. This should be the focus of administrative reforms.
Chen Sung-shan is a commissioner with the Civil Service Protection and Training Commission.
Translated by Francis Huang
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