The Cabinet on Friday approved an action plan to streamline and increase efficiency in the public sector and promote deregulation for implementation through 2005 following the reorganization in January of central government ministries and agencies, officials said.

The so-called outline of administrative reform, which Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori pledged in September to work out by the end of the year, is designed to change how state workers are employed, reform public corporations and encourage municipalities to merge.

The plan says the current practice of promoting public-sector workers based on seniority should be replaced by a merit system.

It also urges the government to formulate in fiscal 2001 a plan to consolidate, streamline or privatize public corporations.

By the same fiscal year, the outline proposes that a panel of experts review a plan to turn national universities into independent administrative corporations.

On a related note, it proposes that private-sector firms be allowed to start postal services in 2003 when the state's postal services unit is spun off as a public corporation.

The outline also calls on the central government to provide incentives for municipalities to merge, which would enable them to streamline administrative operations.

On deregulation, the outline says the government should work out another three-year plan by March 31, 2001, the end of the current fiscal year. It would cover information technology, medical care and welfare, as well as employment and education, according to the officials.

Elsewhere, the outline encourages online processing of administrative services, hoping to see around 10,000 applications for such services filed via the Internet in fiscal 2003.

By fiscal 2002, the outline says the majority of internal administrative documents within ministries and agencies should be paperless.

70% doubt reforms

Nearly 70 percent of Diet members believe January's administrative reforms will not diminish the influence of bureaucrats in central government affairs, according to a survey released this week.

A group of executives, union officials and academics sent survey questionnaires to all 732 Diet members in October and November and received responses from 353, or 48 percent.

Sixty-eight percent of the respondents said bureaucrats would remain in control of information regardless of the creation of two new posts -- those of state secretary and parliamentary secretary -- aimed at strengthening politicians' hold over ministries.

Meanwhile, 46 percent of the respondents said they did not expect the streamlining of ministries and government agencies to result in improvements to the system, against 44 percent who said they believed it would.

The central government 23 institutions will be merged into 13 in January. Seventy-six percent of those polled said they are interested in the notion of the prime minister being directly elected by the public, while 54 percent said the government should seriously consider the idea.

Thirty percent said Japan should adopt a presidential-style system to allow the public to elect a prime minister, while 51 percent said the prime minister should be directly elected, maintaining the current parliamentary Cabinet system.

When asked to define a "politics-led administration," only 13 percent said this term meant politics led by the Cabinet centering on the prime minister, 51 percent said the term applied to politics led by politicians and 26 percent said it referred to politics led by a ruling party or ruling parties.

Half of the respondents belonging to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said politics should center on a ruling party or ruling parties.

Meanwhile, 73 percent of LDP respondents said they depend on bureaucrats when drawing up policies.

Of the Diet members who responded to the survey, 157 were from the tripartite ruling coalition, of which the LDP is the dominant force.

Meanwhile, 49 percent of respondents said the creation of the new state secretary and parliamentary secretary posts could lead to an increase in "inappropriate intervention" by politicians in administrative affairs and cozy ties between politicians and businesses.