From Passive Avoidance to Proactive Application: A Proposal for Building Taiwan Government Bureaucrats Survey Database (TGBS) under the FOIA*
Don-yun Chen**, Naiyi Hsiao***, Bennis So****
Abstract
Since the introduction in 2005 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in Taiwan, researchers have mainly focused on people’s right to know and how to ease the problem of “information asymmetry” between government and citizenry. Not much attention was given to discussing the possible added value from the perspective of government knowledge and information management (KIM). Because of the preoccupation with the controversy over openness vs. secrecy, the government has not been able to develop and re-use government information to create useable and evidence based managerial knowledge to improve government effectiveness. In this article, we use the 2008 Taiwan Government Bureaucrats Survey (TGBS) to illustrate the possible benefits of establishing Taiwan Government Human Resource Management Database. Some crucial reforms are needed to establish this kind of managerial database and some possible topics of research are discussed to show the potential benefits that will be created by the reform efforts to revitalize the effectiveness of our government.
* Earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2008 Annual Conference of aiwanese Political Science Association.
** Paper correspondent, professor at the Department of Public Administration, ational Chengchi University, e-mail: donc@nccu.edu.tw.
*** Associate professor, the Department of Public Administration, National Chengchi University, e-mail: nhsiao@nccu.edu.tw.
**** Associate professor, the Department of Public Administration, National Chengchi University, e-mail: bennisso@nccu.edu.tw.