The head of the Cabinet's Research, Development and Evaluation Commission yesterday conceded a point many have long known about the government:
The bureaucracy that spends NT$1.6 trillion in taxpayer money each year is inefficient and wasteful.
While the revelation was hardly new, Lin Chia-cheng's (
These and other issues of government reform are expected to top the agenda when the new legislature meets in February.
In a question-and-answer session in the legislature yesterday, Lin told lawmakers that the government needed to shape up to become more efficient.
Ideas include outsourcing government tasks to the private sector or turning over some responsibilities to local-level governments.
In addition to reshaping the face of the government, Lin said bureaucrats could also cut red tape.
"The situation of someone having to obtain a thousand chop marks for one application form shouldn't happen again," Lin said.
As a part of the slimming-down efforts, the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission is studying a proposal to reduce the Cabinet by one third within two years.
In addition, DPP candidates during the legislative election campaign said the number of seats in the legislature should be cut in half to improve the unruly lawmaking body.
A party official last week also said Taiwan should move to a three-branch system similar to the US.
Lin wasn't the only one to take on the issue of government reform yesterday.
In separate comments, Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲), the Academia Sinica president, said the government's efforts to reform the nation's education system has been too slow.
A five-year educational reform, begun in 1998, has fallen short of expectations because little has been changed within the framework of the system, Lee said.
Lee said that education reform should be complete and be coordinated using all available resources.
Aiming at correcting the "inordinate emphasis" on examinations and rigid curricula of school systems, the reform programs include flexibility of school programs and curricula, multiple channels for entering universities and colleges and "life-long education," he noted.
But Lee said that students are still under great pressure to qualify for university entrance. Though educational authorities in the past decades have sought to improve the educational environment and to reduce the pressure on students, students still face a barrage of exams, Lee said.
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