The National Science Foundation's
Tokyo Regional Office periodically reports on developments in
Japan that are related to the Foundation's mission. These reports
provide information for the use of NSF program officers and policy
makers; they are not statements of NSF policy.
Overview
The Government of Japan's Reorganization and Reform Plan is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2001-the first day of the 21st Century, as Japanese officials consistently note. The stated purposes of the plan are:
The fate of the Reorganization and Reform Plan, which was announced in outline in December 1997 by the government of then Prime Minister Hashimoto, became uncertain after Hashimoto's resignation the following summer in the wake of substantial election losses by his Liberal Democratic Party. Prime Minister Obuchi, however, strongly endorsed it and submitted a series of implementing laws to the Diet, which enacted them in July 1999.
The July 1999 laws require:
Additionally, the July 1999 laws required that the total number of government officials must be reduced by 25 percent by the end of 2010.
The laws also strengthen the authority of the Prime Minister over the various ministries and agencies that comprise his government by establishing a Cabinet Office with its own secretariat and its own set of advisory bodies-that is, by establishing a system roughly equivalent to that of the Executive Office of the President in the United States.
[NB: the reasons given for creating the Prime Minster's Cabinet Office-that is, to give the Prime Minister greater understanding of and control of his government-are those that led to the creation, in the United States, of the Executive Office of the Presiden-in 1939, midway through the second term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt!]
Final details of the Government Reorganization and Reform Plan (such as detailed organizational plans for new agencies) are to be announced by the end of 1999 at the time they are submitted to the Diet with approval expected (along with the Japanese Fiscal Year (JFY) 2000 budget) during March 2000.
Impacts on Government Funding and Policymaking for Science and Technology
The most significant impact of the reorganization and reform plan on the Government of Japan's science and technology system will be the merger of the ministry and agency that presently account for approximately two-thirds of the government's science and technology-related budget: namely, Monbusho (the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture) and STA (the Science and Technology Agency). In addition, MITI (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry) is to be redesignated as the Ministry of Economy and Industry. Finally, the resources and authority of the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology will be upgraded significantly.
A substantially simplified organizational structure is envisioned for the merged agency than is currently the case for either Monbusho or STA. At present, Monbusho is organized into seven bureaus and STA into six. Beginning on January 1, 2001, the new, combined ministry (referred to unofficially, in English, as the Ministry of Education and Science) will be organized into eight bureaus, each headed by a Director-General: three for education (Elementary and Secondary Education, Higher Education, and the Lifelong Learning Policy Bureau); three for science and technology (as noted below); a Sports and Youth Bureau; and the Minister's Secretariat. The three science and technology bureaus within the new ministry have been tentatively designated as the:
Science and Technology Policy Bureau, to include a policy division, a planning division, and a division of international affairs;
Research and Development Promotion Bureau, whose responsibilities will include: support for small to medium-sized research programs, scientific institutions, and human resources for science and technology; and industrial research cooperation; and
Research and Development Bureau, whose primary jurisdiction will be over larger-scale research programs, including earthquake research, ocean and earth sciences, and space research and development, most of which are currently under the jurisdiction of STA.
The new Ministry of Economy and Industry (the successor to MITI) will continue to maintain its predecessor's responsibilities for international trade. In addition, it will absorb the current Patent Office, will take over several nuclear power programs from STA, and will assume new responsibilities for the support and encouragement of small and medium sized enterprises. The Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), MITI's R&D administration arm, will be absorbed as an intra-bureau of the new agency. All of AIST's 15 research institutes will be reorganized as Independent Administrative Agencies (see below).
On the policy side, the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology (CST) will be:
By analogy with the US system, the new Directorate-General for Science and Technology within the Cabinet Office would be roughly equivalent to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the President, with the CST roughly equivalent to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).
Independent Administrative Agencies
One of the more interesting features of the Reorganization and Reform Plan involves the change in status of a large number of institutions that are currently under the direct control of a ministry or agency (including national laboratories, national hospitals, and national museums) into Independent Administrative Agencies. One reason for changing the status of these institutions is to exempt them from the 20 percent downsizing of the government bureaucracy that is mandated to take place during the next decade. Other important reasons are to give them greater autonomy and flexibility and, significantly, to make them more competitive by requiring that they raise a portion of their operating expenses from private sources or government contracts. Funds allotted to Independent Administrative Agencies by their parent ministries will depend in part upon the results of periodic performance evaluations.
The institutions slated for conversion into Independent Administrative Agencies on January 1, 2001, include 56 of the current 83 National Research Institutes, including five currently under STA and 15 currently under MITI's Agency for Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). STA's National Institute for Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) will remain under the direct jurisdiction of the merged Monbusho/STA.
Status of National Universities
It now seems likely that Japan's 99 national universities, which are currently directly supported and regulated by Monbusho, are destined to become Independent Administrative Agencies, although that change in status may occur sometime later than January 1, 2001.
The change of status of the national universities, however, remains one of the controversial features of the Reorganization and Reform Plan. Monbusho was adamantly opposed to this proposal when it was first broached. So was its university constituency on the (justifiable) grounds that universities might come to be regarded as potential profit-making institutions that would be required to raise some of their operating funds through contracts with private companies and/or grants from agencies other than the future merged Monbusho/STA.
However, the opposition of the national universities received little support from Prime Minister Obuchi and his advisors. At a September 20, 1999, meeting in Tokyo, then Monbusho Minister Akhito Arima informed the national university presidents that he would support the proposed plan to change the status of the universities to that of Independent Administrative Agencies provided that: (1) the periodic performance evaluations required of all such agencies would be carried out by third parties rather than by the Japanese Government, and (2) universities would retain their autonomy in personnel matters, including the selection of their presidents. Arima also emphasized the need to assure adequate financial support for the universities after they attain their new status.
Prognosis
There is little doubt that the Reorganization and Reform plan is moving ahead on schedule. For over a year there have been personnel exchanges between Monbusho and STA, while the Government of Japan's Fiscal Year 2000 budget (April 1, 2000 to March 31, 2001) has been divided into two portions: one for the first nine months of the fiscal year, which ends on December 31, 2000; the second for the final three months of JFY 2000, in which the preliminary budget is apportioned among agencies that will not even exist until January 1, 2001.
At least on paper, the results of the proposed reorganization should be positive. Certainly the broad objectives of giving the Prime Minster a greater measure over control his Government, reducing the number of ministries, and loosening the grip of the central bureaucracy on institutions such as national laboratories and universities are entirely laudable.
One of the frustrating characteristics of the Japanese that anyone (Japanese or foreign) encounters at an early stage is the virtual absence of communication or cooperation among ministries and agencies. This has led in the past to serious inefficiencies. In the 1980s, for example, STA (through what is now JST, the Japan Science and Technology Corporation) established the CREST (Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology) program, a highly competitive program that supports research conducted by teams of university and industry researchers under the leadership of senior university professors. Although JST regulations governing the use of CREST funds were flexible, they ran afoul of Monbusho's regulatory rules for universities. Since at that time industrial researchers were forbidden to work in university facilities, directors of CREST projects were obliged to rent space off campus. Nor were they permitted to hire their own graduate students, despite the fact that they had funds for junior researchers. Finally, they were not permitted to draw any fraction of their salaries from their CREST budgets. In effect, CREST project directors managed these substantial undertakings for charity!
Although university regulations have been relaxed a good deal during the past 10 years, the impermeable membrane separating Monbusho and STA still leads to serious distortions. JAMSTEC (the Japanese Marine Science and Technology Center), supported by STA, receives substantial funding. In contrast, many first rate Monbusho-supported oceanographic institutes in Japanese universities do not receive adequate funding. In principal, the merger of STA and Monbusho should facilitate better cooperation (and some transfer of funds) between JAMSTEC and these university departments-in principle!
The differing organizational cultures of Monbusho and STA suggests that it may take some time to achieve the Reorganization and Reform Plan's objective of increasing efficiencies by reducing duplication of effort. Monbusho is by far the largest supporter of R&D among Japanese agencies. Its proposed JFY 2000 S&T-related budget is approximately ¥1,384 billion, out of a total government S&T-related budget of approximately ¥3,157. STA ranks second, with a proposed JFY 2000 budget of approximately ¥758 billiont.
Yet science represents less than 20 percent of Monbusho's total budget which, for JYF 2000, is proposed to be ¥7,140 billion. The greatest portion of this amount supports elementary and secondary education, including one-half the salaries of teachers and school administrators throughout the country. Virtually none of Monbusho's staff have science or engineering backgrounds. Rather, they typically are generalists recruited directly from college who, according to a practice common among Japanese ministries and agencies (as well as private companies), spend the first years of their careers assigned to various bureaus within Monbusho before being assigned more or less permanently to some related set of bureaus.
STA, in contrast, is devoted almost entirely to the pursuit and support of science and technology. At present, it also provides staff for the Prime Minister's Council on Science and Technology, a responsibility that will cease at the end of calendar year 2000. STA staff are typically trained as engineers and, to a lesser extent, as scientists.
Monbusho principal research constituents are typically university-based scientists who pursue "small science," as well as a number of inter-university institutes such as KEK (the High Energy Research Organization) in Tsukuba, the National Astronomical Observatory, and the National Institute for Polar Research. STA has typically funded large projects, facilities and organizations, often with commercial implications: e.g., through the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA), the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI), JAMSTEC and SPring 8, a third generation synchrotron radiation source. RIKEN (the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research) is also supported (handsomely) by STA.
In view of these differing organizational cultures and funding priorities, it is likely to be some time before the potential advantages envisioned by the merger of Monbusho and STA are fully achieved. But the fact that mid-level staff from one agency are being assigned to positions in the other suggests that policy level managers are determined to try to accelerate the hoped for harmonization of their two rather distinct staffs.
The implications for national laboratories as they begin to function as Independent Administrative agencies should be interesting. If, as seems to be contemplated, the rigid, uniform regulations under which the laboratories now function are relaxed, then each might be expected to develop its own research style. Because laboratories will also be obliged to seek portions of their operating funds from private sources and/or contracts with agencies other than their principal funder, intersectoral research cooperation might well increase.
The implications for national universities as Independent Administrative Agencies could be even more intriguing, at least from NSF's perspective. Freed (at least in principle) from many of Monbusho's regulations designed in part to assure a measure of uniformity across the entire national university system, they should be able to develop independent styles which might eventually lead to a measure of competition among them-for research funds as well as graduate students. Although many national universities express great concern about the possibility that in the future they may not receive adequate funds and will have to turn to private sources to supplement the budgets they receive from the Government, this is by now an old story in the United States. Some of the more aggressive Japanese universities might decide that their conversion to the status of Independent Administrative Agencies constitutes an opportunity to choose their own future directions, in part by seeking alliances with industrial laboratories and those STA and AIST/MITI laboratories that will, on January 1, 2001, also become Independent Administrative Agencies.
Implications for International Cooperation
The implications of the Reorganization and Reform Plan for international cooperation are also difficult to gauge. On paper they should be very positive, although perhaps not immediately. However, it is difficult to see how they could be negative.
From the perspective of NSF and other US Government scientific agencies, there will be obvious advantages in having to deal with fewer Japanese Government officials, although at present, it is not yet clear how many fewer. The organizational charts for the agency created by merging Monbusho and STA remain sketchy. Additionally, the future status of JSPS (the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) and JST (the Japanese Science and Technology Corporation) remain unclear. JSPS, an independent organization fully funded by Monbusho, handles the mechanics of international cooperative research programs involving Japanese universities, as well as fellowships (Japanese and foreign) for work at universities and other related Monbusho-supported institutions. JST is an analogous organization funded by STA, which handles most of its competitive university grant programs, for example. Whether these two organizations will maintain their independent status or for how long remains to be seen.
It is unlikely that anyone in either Monbusho or STA has given a great deal of thought about how programs to support foreign researchers in Japan will function after January 1, 2001. For example, will the Summer Institute Program for US graduate students (currently supported by STA) and the Monbusho Summer Experience program for graduate students be combined in some as yet unspecified way? Even if these programs do remain separate for some time after the merger of Monbusho and STA, it is likely that officials of the combined agency will be more relaxed than at present about permitting a Summer Institute participant work at a university, or a Monbusho Fellow work at a STA-supported national laboratory than at present-articularly since universities and laboratories will by then be Independent Administrative Agencies!
The effects of the Reorganization and Reform Plan for foreign researchers and their institutions as opposed to representatives of foreign governments in Japan could be to simplify procedures for establishing and carrying out cooperative research projects since, at least in principle, they will be able to deal more or less directly with an Independent Administrative Agency and by pass the Japanese bureaucracy. If at some future date universities and national laboratories really do develop independent styles, such diversity might be a slight complication for foreign researchers. But on balance, the advantages to being able to deal with independent entities should far outweigh such a disadvantage.
It is unlikely that the implications of the Reorganization and Reform Plan will be clear either to Japanese or foreign researchers until well into the first decade of the new century. However, at present, the prognosis for improvements at several levels appears to be positive.