EDITORIAL: Public project reviews

Among the drastic shifts in the political landscape that have occurred since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power last fall, its review of selected public projects stands out the most. The second round of this cost-cutting work starts Friday.

This time around, independent administrative agencies and government-affiliated public-interest corporations are the targets. Both groups are regarded as hotbeds of squandered tax revenues and amakudari (descent from heaven), the practice of handing high-paid, cushy jobs to retired government bureaucrats.

On Monday, the Government Revitalization Unit, in charge of these reviews, announced plans to examine 151 projects in 47 agencies under the jurisdiction of the Cabinet Office and nine ministries.

On the list are the Urban Renaissance Agency, the National Center for University Entrance Examinations and Riken, a science and technology research institute.

We look forward to the committee ensuring that superfluous projects are abolished while feasible projects are transferred to the private sector. Next, the government should eliminate or privatize less-crucial organizations. Individual project reviews, meanwhile, must result in drastic streamlining of organizations and systems.

In the late 1990s, the independent administrative agency scheme was part of the administrative reform package championed by Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. His policies revamped central government ministries and agencies, with the aim of trimming administration work and introducing modern private-sector management methods for greater project streamlining and transparency. Agency heads were to be brought in from the private sector to ensure more efficient operations.

The result, in contrast, has led to more amakudari. Wasteful projects continue to be preserved, even though these agencies were funded by 3 trillion yen ($32.31 billion) in taxpayer money each year. Likewise, bureaucratic sectionalism has been carried over, unchanged, despite the intentions to reform.

Successive Liberal Democratic Party administrations ostensibly pursued reforms, but little progress was made. Agencies serving as amakudari havens, along with ministries clinging to what power they could amass, teamed up with special-interest politicians to mount formidable resistance to change.

In its election manifesto, the DPJ pledged "sweeping reviews, including abolition" of the independent administrative agencies. Amakudari-rampant public-interest corporations, it said, would be "eliminated in principle." We hope the party will use its lack of complicity with these institutions to push through far-reaching reforms.

Some independent administrative agencies still funnel work to affiliated public-interest corporations through contracts, generating more amakudari jobs.

It is time to expose to the light of day this web of family-like structures, which are now so entrenched that they defy detection. Project reviewers must be diligent in exposing them.

Yet, even though the DPJ pledged to root out amakudari, it recently installed Jiro Saito, a former finance vice minister, as the president of Japan Post Holdings Co. The party also has not yet fulfilled its campaign vow of 20 percent across-the-board cuts in national public servant personnel funding.

Reforming the independent administrative agencies is crucial to revamping the civil service system. Can the DPJ government, which came to power partly on a wave of support from civil servant labor unions, pull off such a feat? The next round of project reviews will test its determination.

Meanwhile, the project assessment process has drawn criticism. Some say the deliberation process is too short, and that it is foolish to base key decisions on it. Others complain the reviewers only see short-term cost-effectiveness and lack a medium- to long-term perspective on education, science and technology and other important fields.

What has major significance, however, is that the government maintains full disclosure of these budget reviews, a process historically hidden from the public eye. The sense of taxpayer participation has clearly been heightened. Yukio Edano, state minister in charge of government revitalization, hails this as a "revolution in political culture." We certainly agree.

Yet, public project reviews are not meant merely to lift the government's support rating. Voters are not that gullible. The administration must skip all the theatrics and take real action to excise unnecessary spending in attempting to balance the budget.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 21