Is there really any beef in the ROC's ongoing government re-engineering project? With the initial success of streamlining the Taiwan Provincial Government, we can at least say that a step forward has been taken. Still, what's the difference between the current project and previous administrative reforms?
"With regard to serving the people, the government had hoped to generate a major change by promoting 'one-window service,'" said ROC President Lee Teng-hui at the National Personnel Administration Conference held on May 10, 1999. "However, we can't see the results. A lot of inconveniences still exist, and have created difficulties for the people."
The president's criticism reflected an ongoing governmental effort that aims to establish an innovative, dynamic govern ment that knows how to deal with crises in order to boost national competitiveness. Earlier in the same speech, President Lee had spoken of enhancing the quality of government officials and furthering administrative reform in order to "lay the founda tion for government reinvention."
The Government Reinvention Guidelines, which met Executive Yuan approval in January 1998, has designated three major areas of government re-engineering endeavor: organizational restructuring, personnel and services reinvention, and regulatory system restructuring. Accordingly, three workgroups have been established under a government reinvention pro motion committee, which consists of an even distribution of civil servants from top, middle and low levels. Additionally, a government reinvention advisory committee is composed of successful businessmen, scholars and experts who are supposed to offer advice concerning government revivification.
The implementation of one-window administrative service on a national scale was one of the focal points of the Person nel and Services Reinvention Promotion Plan adopted at a meeting of the Executive Yuan in June 1998. One of the most promising ideas in the government's recent efforts to raise administrative efficiency has been to model the government after a convenience store. "What President Lee was criticizing is the mentality of government employees," explains Chang Che-shen, director-general of the Central Personnel Administration under the Executive Yuan. "We can carry out the institutional reforms, but it's the human factor that decides the actual practice and implementation. That's why I put great emphasis on spiritual revitalization." He believes government employees need to embrace and make substantive seven distinct concepts crucial to revitalizing the government: marketing, budgeting, competition, quality, service, customers and technology.
As necessary as reform is, however, we should not expect government employees to experience any sudden epiphanies. When you are dealing with a bureaucracy, the system, the structure, or the institution always asserts itself as the ultimate solution. The "nonhuman," impersonal corporate machine can work out human problems--or so it is believed. "With regard to personnel and services reinvention, the most important and most difficult job to do is the restructuring of personnel systems," says Chang. "This includes the revision, simplification and liberalization of personnel rules and regulations--such as those governing the examination, assignment, performance rating, and salaries of civil servants."
The restructuring of the personnel system will seek to establish different systems of human resource management, depending on the type of worker (for example, civil servants, teachers, employees of state-owned businesses, and the police); to relax employment restrictions and construct a pluralistic recruitment system (especially concerning personnel with medi cal, high-tech, cultural, and artistic skills); to establish a performance-based promotion system; to develop a system to elimi nate unnecessary or incompetent personnel; to rebuild an encouraging performance rating system (versus the present-day one in which more than eighty percent of those rated receive an "A" mark); and to establish a flexible salary system. "I wish the heads of [state-run] organizations could have a fund for awarding those who work exceptionally hard," says Chang. "I also want to add 'A+' to the existing 'A-B-C' performance ratings, address allegations of unfairness when someone is promoted outside of the regular system, and abolish the card-punching system, which shows little respect for civil servants."
Government renewal is a continuous, never-ending job. Before the current re-engineering project that began when Vincent Siew became the head of the Executive Yuan in September 1997, the latest plan to reform the administration was launched in 1993 by then-Premier Lien Chan, who is now vice president of the ROC as well as the KMT's candidate for the 2000 presidential election. Is there anything really new and different in this new round of governmental revitalization?
"Whereas previous administrative reforms proceeded largely from within government organizations at particular points," Chang explains, "the ongoing government reinvention is pushed forward from both inside and outside the government and is extended, as it were, to an entire area." For example, the Lien Cabinet started a personnel cut program that aimed mainly to boost administrative efficiency; but the current government re-engineering project includes, among other things, the stream lining of the Taiwan Provincial Government (TPG), which has caused a fundamental change in the local government system and has effected a reformulation of the overall governmental hierarchy. In essence, the current program seeks to realize a significant structural transformation of the government.
In terms of the image or conception of the government, the previous administrative reforms aspired to create the charac ter of a "big and powerful" government, based on the assumption of a rational bureaucracy with technical expertise and power. However, the current government re-engineering venture represents a turn from being a techno-bureaucracy to an administrative servant of the people. It seeks to assimilate private-sector resources and establish a "small and beautiful," "small and capable" government for which the satisfaction of the customers' needs is the top priority. Speaking from the historical perspective, the current government system was designed in the first half of this century to govern a big agricultural China--very different indeed from the small technological (not to mention democratic) Taiwan that stands at the threshold of the twenty-first century. One can simply say that government restructuring is the sine qua non of progress.
The promotion of one-window service--which requires the capacity to store information and the speed to transmit it--is closely related to the level of computer literacy within the government. Such literacy, along with the project to introduce the notion of service quality (both a part of the Personnel and Services Reinvention Promotion Plan), is now under the supervi sion of the Executive Yuan's Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission (RDEC). This commission is also responsible for carrying out the Organizational Restructuring Promotion Plan, which aims to expand employment flexibility, reduce the processing time of organizational rules and regulations, simplify and clearly delineate the government's structure, levels and responsibilities, and strengthen the capability of local self-government. The success of this phase (as well as the entire work) of government re-engineering is largely contingent on the enactment of two laws: the Central Government Agency Organizational Basic Law and the Central Government Organization Total Personnel Authorization Law.
Although these two laws were sent to the Legislative Yuan last year, the completion of their legislation does not seem to be anytime soon. The chief contention lies in the distribution of power between the legislative and administrative branches of government. If the two laws can be put into effect, only Cabinet-level government organizations will be required to go to the Legislative Yuan for the establishment or abolition of ministries and offices. Under a fixed number of total personnel and a reasonable sum of employment expenditures, the government can freely make proper adjustments within the administrative structure. However, the Legislative Yuan has the sneaking suspicion that it will lose the right of supervision. "There is no other country in the entire world that offers such a right," says RDEC Chairman Wea Chi-lin. "The result of this system is that, although the departments we need become bigger and bigger, we can't abolish the departments that do not meet the demands of the society." Nevertheless, the chairman has confidence that a final agreement concerning the legislation of these two influential laws will be reached. Once they are passed, the revision of the Organic Law of the Executive Yuan--which has gone unfruitfully through four premiers, or well over a decade--can be expected to be brought to a conclusion.
When it comes to local government organizational adjustment, we touch on the most controversial point of government re-engineering. The streamlining of the TPG entered its second stage on July 1, 1999, in accordance with the Provisional Statute on the Adjustment of the Function, Business and Organization of the Taiwan Provincial Government. We have also seen that the first- and last-elected governor of Taiwan Province, James Soong, has become the hottest presidential candidate--and he seems ready to play the 2000 election game independent of his party, the ruling KMT. However, apart from the inevitable confusion between the technical and politicized aspects of government restructuring--from the KMT's intraparty power struggles, from the independence-unification polemics, and from so many political stars' sentimental appeals to the interests of "province people"--the elimination of the provincial level is indeed one of the most significant steps toward the establishment of a capable government on this small island.
The streamlining of the TPG at least purports to represent an equitable distribution of power between the central and local governments and the consolidation of local self-government. Now, both the Law Governing the Allocation of Govern ment Revenues and Expenditures and the Law on Local Government Systems have completed their legislative procedures and are slated for implementation in 2001. Along with the administrative region's adjustment project that is now in the hands of the RDEC, the local governments can be expected to operate more fairly and smoothly in a provinceless system--despite some initial irregularities and dissatisfactions.
The Executive Yuan's Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), which is in charge of the regulatory system restructuring project, has focused on three domains of government re-engineering. First, with regard to modifying its own role, the central government will encourage the privatization of public enterprise and provide incentives for private-sector participation in public construction--a goal given further impetus by the Promotion of Private-sector Participation in the Public Construction Law, which has been sent to the Legislative Yuan for enactment. Second, in order to increase the efficiency, raise the quality, create a sound and complete financial control system, and meet the demands of Taiwan's rapidly modernizing society, the central government will improve the main business management system and carry out the necessary legal reforms. The priority in the reform program goes to the promotion of administrative procedural law, the revision of anti-fraud regulations, the reasonable division of revenue collection responsibilities between the central and local levels, and a complete review of land usage and zoning systems, among other things. The third area of regulatory system restructuring has to do with the relaxation of regulations and the streamlining and standardization of administrative procedures.
As a long-term project that by its very nature will not reveal any immediate, tangible consequences, the restructuring of the regulatory system tends to receive little attention from the media or the general public. However, all ROC civil servants must acknowledge the importance of keeping a lively and progressive government, even at the expense of their own private interests. "I'd be happy to be the last RDEC chairman, if that's necessary," says Wea Chi-lin. "A civil servant does not work for a particular organization, but for all people." CEPD Chairman Chiang Pin-kung urges government employees to rise above self-centeredness, and he articulates a grand perspective that government workers, perhaps the world over, should learn to embrace: "Imagine that you are looking down at the earth in a spaceship to observe its development. How do you locate yourself in that big picture?"