WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL election approaching, Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (
Such an important issue as the amendment of the government's organization could lead to a political power struggle followed by negotiations between the two major parties. Under these circumstances, the result of the changes might be the opposite of what was intended.
The most significant point of this draft amendment is to downsize the Cabinet from the current 35 administrative entities to 17, in the hope of increasing the efficiency of the administration.
However, there are three blind spots to this government reform.
First, organizational structure is not the only factor that influences the efficiency of the administration. There are many factors that influence efficiency, so it's not possible to improve efficiency by merely reforming organizational structure.
For example, if organizational structure is reformed, but the bureaucratic organizational culture doesn't change, administrative efficiency will not improve. As the adjustment of organizational structure involves organizational reconstruction and re-allocation of work, a long adjustment period is needed.
Since the background, value, culture and standard operational procedures are all different in different organizations, downsizing the Cabinet might cause even more conflict, thus worsening administrative efficiency.
Second, governmental reform cannot be completed in one step. The government must create incentives so that officials are willing to contribute to the organizations they work for and to support the reform to improve administrative efficiency. These additional measures cannot be achieved in a short period of time.
Constant promotion, education and training is needed to prevent the organization's members from opposing the reform. In other words, governmental reform can only succeed if it is based on long-term, continuing plans.
But currently many signs indicate that some people naively think that administrative efficiency can improve if the proposed amendments to the Administrative Organic Law pass, or after certain governmental organizations are established.
How can organizations that have existed for a long time like the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suddenly develop their full potential and function?
Third, there is no consensus on governmental organizational reform. I suspect that the people in favor of the proposal for government organizational reform are in a minority and no majority consensus has been reached.
But if government reform is to succeed, it is a prerequisite that all members of the organizations must agree to the reform and put their best efforts into it.
If there is no consensus among the employees of the organizations, they will never fully support a reform proposal. However, currently it looks like that not only is support low in departments that will be influenced by the changes -- like the strong opposition in institutions that are to be downsized. Furthermore, media reports have said that politicians with different party affiliations don't have the same opinion on this issue.
This is the reason the amendment proposal has been stuck in the legislature for two years already.
Perhaps there are people who think that Taiwan can follow the example of Japanese government reform. In the three years between 2001 and 2004, Japan reduced the number of ministries under the Cabinet Office from 22 to 12. As a result, some people think that organizational reform is the only way to improve administrative efficiency. They have forgotten that politics and culture in Taiwan are not the same as in Japan. A Japanese political scientist I contacted last year had a very negative opinion on these reforms.
We should look at the US' experience with organizational reform of the federal government. During the presidency of Bill Clinton, then vice president Al Gore promoted reform of the central government. They wanted to bring down the cost of government operations while improving work performance. Gore led the planning and implementing of the top-down government reform.
At the same time a bottom-up promotional policy was used, with Gore directly taking part in countless low-level informal discussions and forums on governmental reform.
In this way, administrative efficiency of the US federal government was improved, while the government structure remained unchanged.
This case of governmental reform is seen as a textbook example of the new take on public administration.
Lastly, governmental reform should not be taken lightly. There must be long-term plans as well as rational dialogue and discussion. Such a step should also never be the source of grave political conflict, which is not in accordance with the spirit and goals of administrative reform.
Yang Yung-nane is a professor in the Department of Political Science and vice dean of the College of Social Sciences at Cheng Kung University.
TRANSLATED BY ANNA STIGGELBOUT
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