The archive system adopted for preserving government documents is the keystone of administrative reform in Japan. This is because the system enables the government to be administered democratically, openly, and justly. However, the current Japanese government does not consider the system as a measure to reform itself, but rather as a measure to preserve relatively historically worthwhile documents. It is evident from the statement of a minister involved in the system that the government provides insufficient resources to the organization required for establishing the system.

Public records management and information disclosure are considered as two vital elements in the planning administration. It is only when government agency records are explicitly defined and identified by people that they can request information and use it. However, in Japan's Information Disclosure Law, the maintained records are insufficient and the definition of agency records is rather limited. Therefore, since the Law was put into force, agency records often do not exist by their definition and are disposed of due to the insufficiency of the maintained records. For example, with regard to time taking projects, original documents on cost benefit analysis are disposed of even before the completion of the projects. This makes the task of reviewing government activities extremely difficult for the people, the Diet, courts, and administrative internal review committees.

The lack of objectivity and transparency of information and document management has been pointed out in road construction projects. This article proposes a suitable method for document and information management from the viewpoint of improving objectivity and transparency of public evaluation.

Japan has the crown barrel electronic communication technology in the world. However, this technology has been developed in the face of a very unbalanced democracy owing to a noticeable delay in the administrative organization of national and local governments, information disclosure, and the official document management legislation. “Information is the currency of democracy,” as declared by former American presidential candidate Ralph Nader, can be said to hold true. It can be said that a prompt opening to the public will do the base to certain management of an administrative and the official document. I am looking forward to expect a frank discussion and conducting research on the administrative procedure task force to advance the current state of Japan.

This is the workshop discussion on public records the legislation that we held and shared among the participants during the 31st annual meeting of the Japan Association for Planning Administration on September 20, 2008 in Tokyo. Attached is the recommendation that we, the Administration Procedure Study Group of JAPA, made public on October 16, 2008.

This paper provides an empirical analysis on the decision-making process on loans from the prefectural government, as follows.

First, an amount of the loans increases in the years of local elections, owing to requests from both a governor and the biggest party in the assembly, aiming at absorbing votes who need financing, respectively, when there is a considerable political split between the two. The harder the political struggles are, the stronger this tendency becomes.

Second, on the other hand, bureaucrats at the Ministry of Finance, MOF, incline to reduce rather than expand public loans, facing the huge deficit in the public sector. That is, they are not categorized in the Niskanen's type.

My conclusion suggests that the political and bureaucratic intervention in the process of decisionmaking on the public loans can not sufficiently provide financial supports to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. In other words, the public loans should more rely on the market-mechanism.

This paper is a contribution to the development of the methodology of public involvement（PI） in the decision-making process of a road scheme. In Japan, studies on PI have advanced since the 1990s, and the efficacy of PI has been especially understood. However, each technique of PI, including the Experts Stakeholders Meeting, in which some stakeholders and experts deliberate how to prepare a road scheme, is not adequately acknowledged as of yet. The Experts Stakeholders Meeting is fit for deliberation on the road scheme, which requires a long-term and large-scale view, by providing members with the chance to discuss carefully and closely. At the same time, three issues of the Experts Stakeholders Meeting are suggested in previous studies: （1） the basic direction of deliberation depends on the role of meeting; （2） the deliberation process is affected by the selection of members; and （3） supplying and sharing information play important roles in efficient deliberation. The authors analyzed the case of the Chiba-Kashiwa Road Meeting, which included deliberation on the construction of the bypass of national road among stakeholders and experts from the viewpoint of the abovementioned three challenges, by describing the foundation process, organization of members, deliberation process, and conclusion of deliberation through literature and interview surveys.

The overhaul of the subsidy system in local governments has been a significant issue in recent years, because of the financial difficulties, the merger of municipalities, etc. Although some municipalities merged with the others to increase the efficiency of administration, the total subsidies rose. They tried to find a new way out in many municipalities. This paper aims to clarify the general circumstances of the overhaul of the subsidy system in 239 municipalities of Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, and Chiba Prefecture. The findings are as follows:（1）81% of the municipalities had overhauled the subsidy system and 16% are now proceeding to discuss it, （2）the median of the reduction rate based on money is 10%. But the amount of subsidy grew up after the overhaul in six municipalities,（3） the merger of municipalities triggered the overhaul of the subsidy system in Ibaraki Prefecture,（4） committees for review and discussion are set up in 56% of the municipalities; however, the external member ratio is only 4%,（5）56% of the municipalities adopt the terminal of subsidy. Sixteen municipalities apply the “Sun-Set System” to all subsidies, and（6）the “Proposal System” did not prevail and there is a difference between prefectures.

Recently, a considerable amount of attention has been paid to “social capital” and “collaboration,” which are indispensable infrastructure for promoting regional rejuvenation. However, it is difficult for citizens to collaborate with the local government, since mutual assistance networks for the community are weakening. The author conducts a case study on the management of the Nature Center “Forest KOZAN” in Noboribetsu, Hokkaido, to illustrate the promotion process of citizen empowerment and collaboration with citizens, NPO, and the local government. This study illustrates that the effective use of outsider's knowledge could promote the empowerment of citizens. Further, at that time, it is important to utilize and systematize citizens' local knowledge, and change the contents of technical knowledge provided by outsiders according to the degree of citizen participation. In addition, based on the research of the volunteer organization “Momonga Club,” this paper describes that citizens can promote collaboration with the local government under the following situations:（1）accumulating extensive local knowledge by changing “individual knowledge” to “organizational knowledge,”（2） opening the decision-making process, and（3） creating opportunities for participation in organizational activities. The author concludes that citizens can promote autonomous regional rejuvenation on this occasion.

The forest environment tax is an original taxation system, which was introduced in Kochi Prefecture in 2003 and later spread to the entire country. It can be classified into three types: “problem solution type,” “special target type,” and “function valuing type” by analyzing the introduction form by the factor analysis, though it was formally a system that looked like. Further, it is understood that most administrative divisions belong to the “function valuing type.” Moreover, when the difference at the introduction time was analyzed by conducting a heavy regression analysis, it was clarified that there was a difference in the introduction purpose between a forerunner administrative division and subsequent administrative divisions.

Landscape regulations such as district plan and building agreement are considered as measures that preserve the attractive residential environment. However, it is unclear as to whether or not these landscape regulations raise the housing prices, and owing to this issue, landowners sometimes hesitate to introduce these regulations. In this paper, we analyzed the impact of landscape regulations on the single-family house prices by utilizing more than 14,000 examples of market data.

Considering various lot and district variables, we showed that these regulations affect the prices in the ordinary least squares（OLS）estimation; however, the same is unclear when we consider spatial autocorrelations. In addition, lot size restrictions and federal acquisition regulation（FAR）, which are related to landscape regulations, increase the housing prices in certain district conditions.

The purpose of this study is to consider the role of partnership in planning and implementing regional revitalization plans. For this purpose, I conducted a research, which involves the survey of local governments in the Kansai area and focuses on the initiatives of partnership in the processes. The following results were obtained:（1）the local government played a leading role in planning and implementing the regional revitalization plans;（2） the requirement of partnership for gaining planning approval was critical; and（3） built-in comprehensive grants were expected by the local government.