The National
Science Foundation's Tokyo Regional Office periodically reports
on develop-ments in Japan that are related to the Foundation's
mission. It also provides occasional re-ports on developments
in other East Asian countries. These reports are intended to provide
information for the use of NSF program officers and policy makers;
they are not statements of NSF policy.
This report is based on a presentation by Mr. Shinya Wakimoto, Director, International Research Cooperation Division at AIST, on February 2, 2000. The presentation was given at a meeting of the Tokyo Science and Technology Diplomat's Circle at the Canadian Embassy. Portions of the report are drawn from summary notes prepared by Phillip Hicks, Science Attache at the Canadian Embassy, whose permission to use them in this way is gratefully acknowledged.
The New MITI. As part of the Government of Japan's reorganization plan, scheduled for implementation on January 1, 2001 (see Tokyo Report Memorandum #99-11, dated October 7, 1999), the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) will remain as a single entity and will be reorganized within its existing envelope. This situation contrasts with plans for Monbusho (Ministry of Education and Research) and STA (Science and Technology Agency), which are slated to be merged into a single new Ministry. Indeed the "new" MITI's responsibility will even increase slightly. STA's Atomic Energy Bureau and Nuclear Safety Bureau are to be integrated into a new unit within the reorganized MITI called the Agency of Natural Resources and Energy.
The new MITI is being tentatively referred to (in English) as Ministry of International Trade, Industry and Economy (MITIE). The Japanese name will be Keizai Sangyo-sho, or, directly translated, Ministry of Economy and Industry. Many MITI officials still wish to retain the original name acronym "MITI" for the simple reason that it has immediate national and international recognition and respect, having been known to the wider world for a very long time. However, they are willing to compromise with the adoption of the English MITIE acronym that has, however, not yet been officially approved.
Currently, MITI consists of seven bureaus and three agencies. Bureaus differ from agencies with respect to their mandate and their degree of autonomy. The former are under the direct control of the Minister; the latter are semi-independent of the Minister and as such have substantially more freedom. Directors of agencies need only to report to the Minister on politically important points. As a case in point, MITI's Agency for Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) is regarded as a semi-governmental organization. As a consequence, AIST is permitted to decide all but the most sensitive policy issues according to its own wishes, relatively independent from governmental control exercised through the MITI Minister.
The Existing AIST. Currently, AIST employs close to 3,000 individuals. Of this number, 270 are administrators, and the remainder are permanent researchers within AIST's existing 15 national institutes. Seven of these institutes are located in Tsukuba City; the remainder are scattered throughout Japan's for main islands. Post-doctoral fellows and invited researchers (and similar temporary working individuals) at those 15 institutes are not included in these figures.
Two of the principle objectives of the Japanese Government impending reorganization plan are to: 1) decrease the total number of government employees by 25 percent by 2010; and 2) separate more clearly policy making and planning from policy implementation functions. These objectives are evident in the planned reorganization of AIST. The current policy making and planning units within AIST will be moved into a new unit directly responsible to the Minister of the new MITIE, while the 15 existing AIST institutes will become units within a new Independent Administrative Agency and are also destined to be reconfigured into a different set of units. They will continue to be funded in part by MITIE, but their staff members will no longer be considered government employees.
Until now, there has been no little or no connection, at MITI, between science and technology policy formulation and economic policy. As of January 1, 2001, those two functions are to be integrated within the new MITIE. In particular, an Industrial Science and Technology Policy Division will be created, one of whose units will be an International Affairs Office. This new division will be one of 11 in a new Industrial Science and Technology Policy and Environmental Protection Bureau, responsible directly to the MITIE Minister.
Reorganization of AIST Institutes. For the next three months, the 15 existing AIST research institutes-responsible for policy implementation-will be housed, temporarily, within this Industrial Science and Technology Policy and Environmental Protection Bureau. Then, with the start of JFY 2001 (April 1, 2001) they will undergo a significant change in status: the existing AIST institutes will be integrated into a single, mammoth new body known as the "Industrial Science and Technology Institute" (ISTI) with the status of an Independent Administrative Agency. ISTI will NOT be part of the government, even though it will receive baseline government funding. Since its employees (including its scientists and engineers) will not be public servants, the creation of ISTI will not only separate the policy making and planning functions from the policy implementation functions of the current AIST, but will also serve to reduce the number of government employees.
Effective April 1, 2001, the 15 existing AIST institutes under the ISTI umbrella will be reorganized into 22 institutes, each with roughly 100 of the current total of approximately 2,500 AIST researchers. [NB: the names and functions of these new institutes are due to be made public on April 1, 2000.] MITIE's new Industrial Science and Technology Policy Division will be responsible for determining policy regarding the general direction of ISTI's research and development (R&D): e.g., whether and to what extent to emphasize environmental technology, biotechnology or information technology, for example. However, the detailed activities of each institute will be decided by ISTI's Board of Directors. Thirty percent of the members of this board (to be composed of a President, Vice President and up to 10 Executive Directors) are likely to be chosen from outside AIST/MITI, and the remaining 70 from the existing institutes. This Board of Directors will also have authority for ISTI's personnel and financial management, including the allocation of funds among salaries, equipment, and new facilities, for example.
Centers of Excellence. The most significant new feature of the reorganized AIST system will be the creation, under the ISTI umbrella (also on April 1, 2001), of between 15 and 25 Centers of Excellence. Each such center will focus on a closely related set of interdisciplinary themes of particular interest to industry. Unlike the 22 new institutes, which will be permanent, each center will exist for three to seven years, depending on its mission, and the total number of centers will also vary with time. Centers will be housed mostly in the facilities of existing institutes. AIST expects that these centers will focus their recruitment on excellent young researchers coming not only from the institutes, but also from industry and universities. In many cases, they may exist primarily as virtual centers.
Within ISTI, the institutes and centers are intended to comprise something of a fluid matrix, with the former, as permanent entities, represented as columns, and the latter, as temporary groupings, comprising the rows which cut across and integrate the activities of the institutes.
Although many details about the proposed centers including their specialties have yet to be disclose, the January 31, 2000, edition of the Nihon Keizai Shinbun, which is regarded as a reliable source, reported that the functional areas of an initial set of 15 centers would be the following:
1) active faults
2) deep geological environments
3) environmental chemical substances assessment
4) fluorinated greenhouse gas alternatives
5) life cycle assessment
6) power electronics
7) bioinformatics
8) tissue engineering
9) gene discovery
10) cyber assistance technologies
11) advanced carbon materials
12) synergistic materials
13) supercritical fluids
14) smart structures
15) nanotechnology
Funding and Evaluation. ISTI will not only be encouraged, but will be virtually compelled to seek non-MITIE sources of funding, mainly from private industry, but possibly by means of contracts with other Ministries as well. The current total budget of the 15 AIST institutes is \80 billion (~$0.8 billion). Beginning in JFY 2001, MITIE expects to fund the newly created ISTI-including both its institutes and centers-at an annual level of \100 billion (~$1 billion). Since the centers will draw staff from the institutes as well as private industry and academia, their expenses (at least initially) are likely to be considerably less than those of the institutes, which will very likely receive the lion's share of the \100 billion allocation for JFY 2001. However, it is also probable that the aggregated budget of the 22 new ISTI institutes will be no more than, and possibly even less than, the \80 billion aggregated budget of the existing 15 AIST institutes.
Looking further into the future, the total budget that ISTI receives from MITIE will depend on external evaluations to be conducted every five years. To this end, MITIE will establish an Executive Evaluation Committee to oversee this process. Although details have yet to be disclosed, it is expected that prominent Japanese as well as foreign researchers will be invited to serve as evaluation committee members.