The cuts would be made possible by an integrated system that manages the personnel affairs and salaries of central bureaucrats, which will be introduced by the end of fiscal 2007, the ministry said. The new system will make it unnecessary for each ministry and agency to separately calculate salaries and overtime pay, resulting in more efficient personnel management.
However, the exact figures for the cuts was not officialized because of a strong backlash from other ministries and agencies against possible cuts in their personnel and budget.
In July, the government compiled the e-government plan, which aims to make government more efficient by utilizing information technology.
The government initially planned to draft a plan to optimize personnel management and salary systems as a whole by the end of December.
In line with the policy, the Public Management Ministry made a practical estimate. But the plan could not be presented officially because of the strong opposition.
The ministry reported only the outline of the optimization plan at a liaison meeting of the government Friday, and carried the whole of the report only on its Web site.
The ministry also postponed a decision on the plan until February.
According to the outline, the National Personnel Authority will introduce the integrated system to manage the personnel affairs and salaries of all of about 800,000 central bureaucrats.
The new system will lower management costs to slightly more than 1 billion yen a year, compared with the current 3.3 billion yen for the development and maintenance of computer software to do the job separately at each ministry and agency.
More efficient work at ministries and agencies would also reduce the work burden on the bureaucrats, resulting in an estimated 13 million working hours a year being cut.
That figure means that 6,000 of the tens of thousands of managers in all the ministries and agencies could be cut from the workforce.
The automation of processing numerical data would reduce work hours by 10 million, and closer job cooperation among ministries and agencies would cut 1 million hours.
The system integration would also reduce the number of steps required to approve or record personal data, such as marriages and claims for overtime, from 10 to five. That would cut 2 million working hours, the estimate said.
According to a U.N. ranking of the progress of e-government projects, the United States is ranked No. 1, while Japan is ranked 18th in the world.
E-government is aimed at increasing bureaucratic efficiency and making things more convenient for the public by providing information on the Internet and allowing them to fill out applications online.
Quelle: The Daily Yomiuri, 27.12.2003
