2001 Central Government Reform

The 2001 Central Government Reform (中央省庁再編, Chūō Shōchō Saihen^?) by the Japanese government involved the establishment of a new ministry, the merging of existing ministries and the abolition of others. This resulted in little more than a change of ministry names (with the exception of the Environment Agency which gained ministry status — a longtime goal).

The objectives of the reform are:

The administrative reform has reorganized the Ministries according to their main "purposes" in a way that they can perform as synthetic and coherent a function as possible. In order to prevent sectionalism, which has been pointed out for its detrimental effects and respond to issues flexibly and cohesively, systems of policy coordination have been constructed so that related administrative organs, in light of their purposes, hold deliberations on their inter-Ministerial measures. A system of policy evaluation has been introduced for the government itself to evaluate the effects of its policies before and after implementation, and to utilize the result of evaluation in the planning and drafting of policies.

Introduction of the new system of Independent Administrative Institutions is one of the core items of the administrative reform.

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