In recent years, under the influence of NPM (New Public Management), local
government management reform has been taken forward. NPM has had a wide range
of diverse influences on local government organization. For example, if we look at the
separation of the planning and drafting function on the one hand and the
implementation function on the other, we can find examples, as referred to in this
paper, of large-scale reorganization of the Chief ’s internal office or organizational
adjustment of policy directions. Or we can take the example of the establishment of the
system of local independent administrative corporations in line with the government
policy of promoting bodies with independent corporate status, and it is pertinent to
refer here to the transformation of local public universities, which were formerly
classified as one part of the internal structure of the Chief ’s offices into public
university administrative corporations. Taking a broader view, in the area of the
introduction of the market principle into administrative services, we can find various
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methods of outsourcing, for example, commissioning private-sector firms, designating
specific firms to carry out specified administrative supervision, PFI, implementing
marketing tests, and so on, in relation to such sectors as general affairs or the supply
of services to residents.
Reform trends such as those outlined here have greatly changed the
organizational character of local governments, and what is more important than
anything else in this context is the adoption by local governments of the principle of
improving and enhancing the wellbeing of residents by using their own autonomous
powers. Firstly individual local governments are required to make unceasing efforts to
activate organizational revisions with a view to improving administrative services
focused on local residents. With this aim in mind, what is now required is to take
decentralization forward even more strongly with the aim not only of reducing direct
regulations, but also indirect regulations in the form of substantial restrictions
imposed through regulations concerned with the administrative work and authority of
individual sections, as well as reducing restrictive conditions so as to make it possible
for local governments to exercise appropriate autonomous organizational authority.