‘Reinventing the government’ is an important governance issue in Taiwan.
The Executive Yuan will be restructured in 2012 with three main goals:
downsizing the government, enhancing organizational adaptability, and
boosting governance effectiveness. Taiwan is a fast aging society. Its government
has proposed many social welfare policies for the elderly. A wellknown
one is the ‘long-term care system’ that has been implemented by the
Executive Yuan. However, departmentalism has been a major problem for
the long-term care system in the past two decades. “Fragmented government”
and “wicked problems” have become main issues in this system. The
proposed Department of Health and Social Welfare is a crucial government
ministry that is expected to solve existing problems and offer better services
to the elderly.
Holistic governance is a new theory in contemporary public administration
that offers a critical perspective in this study. “Coordination” and “integration”
are core concepts of this theory. By holistic governance, we emphasize
strategies of coordination, including toleration of a specific set of insti-tutions, separation and contingency. Finally, we propose five strategies of integration,
such as integrating information systems, developing crossboundary
projects, holding regular conferences among central and local governments,
changing organizational culture and managing conflicts, and offering
opportunities for learning.