President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday encouraged civil servants to work on government reform and economic development in order to recreate a "Taiwan miracle."
Chen said that the era of government reform has started, and that public servants are the driving force behind the reconstruction.
Chen made the comments at an international conference on the career development of public servants in the 21st century, sponsored by the Examination Yuan. Chen told attendees that the reinvention of government and government efficiency are the keys to increasing the nation's competitiveness.
"The civil service is the core sector in governmental reinvention. In order to strengthen the governmental team, it is necessary to learn the strategies and performance management techniques commonly used by the private sector," Chen said.
Chen also pointed out that the first stage of governmental reinvention would focus on the revision of public servants' employment procedures and regulations in order to gain the greatest benefit from human resources.
Chen urged that public servants maintain their neutral status instead of serving in political parties so as to help ensure smooth transfers of power.
"That is the democratic spirit," Chen said, adding that public servants should pursue life-long learning to improve the quality of government services.
In response to Chen's calls, Examination Yuan President Hsu Shui-teh (許水德) said that the Examination Yuan should have the responsibility of planning the civil-service system to help the nation's long-term development.
"The goal of this conference is to provide an occasion to learn the views and opinions of other countries for the Examination Yuan's reference," Hsu said.
There were around 200 public servants in attendance yesterday. Academics from Germany, Japan, Singapore and the US were among the speakers at the conference.
One of the questions participants raised during discussions concerned the rights of public servants to organize labor unions. The democracy-within-government issue was hotly debated.
Chairman of the Youth Organization of the Federal Civil Servant Committee in Germany, Jorg Aland, said that the relationship between the trade union within the public sector and the government should be one of partnership, not antagonism.
"The government and the trade union should cooperate with each other," Aland said.
Minister of Examination Lin-Liu Chu-chi (林劉初枝) remarked that there is still a lot of room for the development of a democratic mechanism within Taiwan's public sector. "We can learn about the systems in other advanced countries and review our own system," Liu said.
Answering criticism from some participants that the public servants' labor union in Taiwan has too little power, National Taiwan University political science professor Hwang Gin-tarng (黃錦堂) said the public sector was moving in the right direction.
Democracy should permeate the civil service, Huang said, and because of that a trade union's power should not be restricted.
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