The government's committee for promoting devolution has laid down the basic ideas for the reform and the government has set up the headquarters to push it. The committee is scheduled to report to the government over the next two years. It is hoped that the committee will come up with proposals that will strengthen local government in terms of both power and finance, and that the government will sincerely implement them.
As a matter of principle, the committee stresses that the idea of centralization is outmoded and calls for strengthening municipalities. The committee thinks that municipalities should be treated as the core units of local government. As a first step, the committee will review the division of roles between the central and local governments, especially in the fields close to local residents. Redundancy between the work of the central and local governments is to be removed, and regional offices of the central government are to be abolished or scaled down.
About 210,000, or 70 percent, of the 330,000 national public servants work in these regional offices. It is estimated that by transferring the work of these offices to local governments, the central government workforce could be slashed by up to 100,000.