Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Cabinet is considering introducing an evaluation system for government projects to ensure strict budgetary requests and eliminate wasteful spending, officials said Sunday.
The evaluation would start several years after each project is launched to determine whether the original purpose has been accomplished. The National Strategy Office led by Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan will set up a committee to map out details of the system, the officials said.
The system would apply to projects covered by the fiscal 2010 budget, they said.
According to a blueprint by Kan and advocates of the system, bureaucrats would be required to set goals on what a project will accomplish and how it will do so in an established time frame when they request a budgetary allocation. At the end of the period the project would be examined in accordance with the goals.
Planners of projects that get a poor evaluation would be held responsible for the failure, so the results would directly affect their personnel ratings, the officials quoted Kan as saying recently, suggesting this could help forestall lax project planning.
Elected officials who grant approval for projects crafted by bureaucrats would also be held responsible.
The plan's critics fear it could discourage bureaucrats from planning new projects.
The Democratic Party of Japan stated in its campaign manifesto for the Aug. 30 Lower House election that it wants to make the process of evaluation and information disclosure more transparent to curb waste.
The government already has a mechanism involving the Board of Audit for checking budget implementation, but a senior official said the envisaged process would evaluate the usefulness of projects rather than focusing on how the budget was implemented.