Keiko WATANABE
NIER Research Bulletin, 148 7-22, Mar, 2019 Peer-reviewed
This paper intends to analyze the development of so-called children’s administration from the
perspective of interagency collaboration.
Administrative organization, based on the “principle of shared management”, is divided into
smaller sections, such as departments and/or divisions, and their respective affairs under the jurisdiction are allocated. They expect the shared management to clarify who is responsible for their
respective offices, to enhance the expertise and skill of the staff to improve efficiency, and to
reduce the conflicts of inter-organization. On the other hand, shared management in a silos structure can cause “sectionalism” as functional impairments.
Interagency collaboration, while accepting the shared management of administrative organization, attracts attention as a method to link the relevant government agencies so as to improve the
quality of public services. In this discussion on interagency collaboration, “organizational integration” is understood to be one of the measures to realize multi-institutional collaboration.
Many municipalities have reduced their administrative resources such as human resources and
financial resources because of a population decline and aging community. It has become common
for municipalities to integrate the childcare division and early childhood education division especially after the introduction of the “Comprehensive Support System for Children and Childrearing”.
This paper clarifies the aspects of figures and features for the development of children’s administration by analyzing two leading municipal cases from the perspective of interagency collaboration. The analysis has raised some suggestions to promote interagency collaboration in
administration