Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

2010 Category 3: JAPAN
The second change is better mutual understanding between the public administration
and the public. Because all the participants in Collaboration Testing (the government,
the private sector, and CSOs) want to elevate citizen satisfaction, they have more
trusting attitudes when interacting with one another. Furthermore, many meetings
were organised in Saga to ensure thorough understanding among the stakeholders on
what Collaboration Testing is and what public services are involved.
The third change is more solid leadership. In the past, the government often rejected
proposals from citizens on the assumption that the administration knew best how to
provide public services. Under Collaboration Testing, however, the proposals will be
adopted unless the government unit in charge has a clear rationale for rejection. Governor
Furukawa endorses this approach by directly overseeing each case that the unit
in charge intends to reject. The government officials have to convince the Governor
why the proposals won’t work.
Acting on the belief that information possessed by the government is the citizens’
property, the Saga prefectural government has realized complete and thorough information
disclosure about public services, except in certain cases mandated by law.
This openness is the distinctive feature of this initiative. The government releases
information over the Internet and at all branch offices, using citizen-friendly language.
In addition, the government holds town meetings at branch offices and town
halls to have face-to-face discussions with citizens about its activities.
Since Collaboration Testing was launched in 2006, the government has posted information
about almost all (over 2,000) public services every year. During 2006–2008,
the government received 582 proposals from 158 CSOs, private companies and academic
institutions. During those three years, the number of CSO proponents more
than tripled, from 14 to 48 organisations. Out of 582 proposals, the government adopted
351 proposals on 290 public-service items for immediate or short-term implementation.
This means that Collaboration Testing has led to 290 new public-private
partnership arrangements in Saga since 2006.
To measure citizens’ satisfaction with the first wave of services launched as a result
of Collaboration Testing, a survey was conducted in 2007. Altogether, 76 percent of
the beneficiaries of those services (56 new services in all) responded that they were
satisfied. For example, within six months after the consulting services at the Government
Information Centre were outsourced, the number of inquiries to the Centre increased
significantly, the number of visitors almost doubled and 96 percent of the
visitors responded that they were satisfied with the new services.
The Saga government has also been successful in reducing business operating costs
by incorporating ideas for efficiency improvements from the private sector. For example,
by accepting a proposal from a telephone service company and outsourcing
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