The Chief of the Standing Committee on State Structure, J.Sukhbaatar, answers our reporter’s questions relating to yesterday’s seminar on administrative reform.

 What is administrative reform and how will it help citizens?
The reform is aimed at structural changes at all levels of administrative organizations to improve public services. It needs a long time to take effect. Participants noted how Mongolia has adopted major political and fiscal reforms in the last two decades but administrative reform has been severely neglected. Such change, however, has to come in phases.

Participants referred to large-scale administrative reforms in Japan, South Korea, Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany, and also in Russia and China. This has shown that   political and economic reforms are not effective without similar innovation in administration and state services.

How would the seminar help?
Political parties have not considered the issue so far but I hope the seminar would send the right message to them and administrative reform will be part of their platform in next year’s election. People want better and more responsive administration and political parties should see its importance.