ABSTRACT
In September 1993, after taking office as premier (or head of the Executive Yuan), Lien Chan launched his ‘Administrative Renovation Programme’. This was the first major administrative reform since the Kuomintang (KMT, the Nationalist Party) government liberalised its rule in 1987 and part of a long series of administrative reforms dating from the early days of KMT’s retreat to Taiwan upon defeat by the Communists on mainland China in 1949. In the 1950s and 1960s, several reform commissions were set up to streamline the administration, notably the 1955 Huang Ji-liu Commission and the 1958 Wang Yun-wu Commission. In 1972, during the premiership of Chiang Ching-kuo, ten measures of administrative renovation were promulgated. In 1978, the Executive Yuan set up a steering committee ‘to strengthen service to the people’ and to assist various departments in promoting a service culture (Wang 1996b: 15). In the footsteps of Lien Chan’s reform programme, Vincent Siew, upon taking up the premiership, announced in March 1997 the formation of a Government Reinvention Steering Committee and a Government Reinvention Consultative Committee, as part of the formal initiative to launch a ‘Government Reinvention Programme’.
