Basic Report

  
  
   Since the introduction of local autonomous system in Korea in the middle of 1990s, thedegrees of the decentralization and self-governing rights of local autonomous bodies havebeen increasing. Improving the autonomous degree of organizational and personnelmanagements in local bodies is able to be understood in the same broad context. The Rohadministration, so-called the Participatory Administration, had initiated decentralization policyand tried to transfer authorities and decision-making powers to local bodies in relatively anactive manner. Academic and research communities have studied on the decentralization anddesirable ways to consolidate local autonomy system.There is, nonetheless, no sufficient researches on how to strengthen autonomousorganizational and personnel managements in local bodies. This study is to analyze the impactof the Total Ceiling System of Local Public Officials Wage(TCSLPO) on the volume of publicofficials and the change of organizations, and then, based on the analyses, attempts to exploreways to improve the degree of autonomy in organizational management of local bodies. TheTCSLPO was introduced to increase self-organizing powers of local bodies.To achieve these research purposes, the second chapter reviews on theoretical discussions,international cases and present studies regarding autonomy. the third chapter examineshistorical changes and developments of self-organizing powers of local bodies and inquireschanges of organizations and public personnels volumes in Korean fundamental local bodies,Shi, Gun, and Gu, after the introduction of the TCSLPO. The fourth chapter figures out howto consolidate autonomous organizational operation and management in local bodies. Theresearch results of the analyses of departmental units and quotas of public officials showthat local bodies have focused on enlarging the number of departmental units and the numberof high-ranked public officials. These findings imply that local bodies have had increasingself-organizing powers and have operated in a more autonomous manner for organizationaloperation and management, which means that the TCSLPO may help improve the degreeof autonomy in local bodies. However, this does not mean that the increased autonomy hasa positive influence on highly performing organizational management.There is a huge gap of perspective on the organizational autonomy between centralgovernment and local autonomous bodies. The latter argues for active and wide range ofdecision-making power transfer on organizational design of local autonomous bodies whichis regulated by a presidential ordinance while the former contend for maintaining currentregulations to prevent local bodies from expanding organizational volume and increasing thenumber of high-ranked public officials.It is not allowed under the current Korean legal system in terms of the decentralizationand autonomy for local bodies to enjoy completely independent autonomy without anyrelationship with the central government. In particular, self-enacting power of the local bodiesis strictly constrained. The local bodies have to make their by-laws under boundaries of lawsand ordinances. Even though this legal regulations are present, it is necessary to voluntarilyand incrementally transfer powers on organizational building and design to local bodies. Bothcentral and local governments recognize the necessity of transfer as a desirable direction, butthere are differences on timelines and ranges of power transfers among them.There is a premise for local bodies to allow power of the organizational building and designin full that internal and external control system works properly. In terms of external control,the Ministry of Security and Public Administration, a representative ministry regarding localbodies and decentralization matters, needs to provide a guideline for organizationalmanagement and open information and allow access to it for stake-holders of external controlon organizational and personnel managements in local bodies. And also, local civil societyand media need to play a key role of monitoring and supervising practices of managementand operation of the local bodies.In terms of internal control, firstly the local council definitely needs to check and supervisesorganizational operations of local executive bodies. To accomplish the well-functioninginternal control system it is necessary to reinforce the powers or authorities of the localcouncils. The sound internal control system may be hard to work under a circumstance thatheads of two branches are associated with the same political party. It drives us to take intoaccount abolishing political party designation system on running candidates for the heads ofexecutive and legislative branches, which implies that the local council as a checkingcountepart on the executive has to be allowed more powers than it has.It is necessary to reinforce the roles and power of internal auditing organization for leadingto reasonable organizational and personnel management in local bodies. It has to be basedon improving level of transparence that audit-related information should be open to citizensand stake-holders and a healthy statistical system should be developed and maintained. Ifnecessary, these statistics should consistently be managed and open by assistance of the highlevel governmental organizations such as provincial government or the Board of Audit andInspection.At an ideal way it is definitely necessary to grant full autonomy in devising and managingorganizations to local bodies to help solve local problems and make policies by themselves.To reach an ideal world of fully decentralized and autonomous local bodies we need to takeinto deep account problems, limitations and premises under current circumstances and thento figure out ways to transfer relevant powers and authorities to local bodies in acomprehensive manner. The issue of granting and securing powers of autonomousorganizational building and design of local bodies should be newly resolved and foundedunder the broader framework of autonomy- and decentralization-related matters.