Kobe City Administration

CONTENTS

1. The Long Tenure of Kobe Officials
2. A career of Service to Kobe City

1. The Long Tenure of Kobe Officials

An analytical note by Dr. Gayl Ness and Dr. Hirofumi Ando

The Kobe officials’ presentations on water and sanitation at AUICK’s workshop carry an important insight into effective urban governance. In both areas, Kobe officials have shown a unique capacity to integrate technical developments of solutions with public mobilization of programs for support of the solution. Where does this unique capacity come from? How is it that Kobe officials easily move from highly technical issues to popular mobilization?

Kobe City Hall

Obviously two critical bits of knowledge and experience are involved: technical and social organizational. The officials must know where to get and how to draw on the most advanced scientific knowledge on a specific issue. In addition, they must know how the citizens are organized, how they will react to problems, and how they can be used as part of the solution. Where do Kobe officials get these two pieces of critical information? We think we can find the answer in the long tenure of city officials.

Early in AUICK’s comparative research projects in Asian cities , we noted a critical condition of urban administration: the tenure of city officials. Kobe officials essentially have a life time career in the city. On the administrative side, officials move usually every three years to different parts of the city government. One tour might be in a ward office, in close contact with the citizens on a daily basis. Another tour might be in a technical bureau, working with water or sanitation, health or welfare, education or the promotion of scientific research. This gives the officials a rich and broad experience of how the city works. In effect, they come to know the city, how it operates as something like a living organism; they know who works in different units and they especially know how its citizens react to city governance. This does two things; it provides officials with the knowledge needed to be effective administrators and it builds a deep commitment to the city and its citizens.

In contrast, AUICK’s research found that higher level city administrators in India and Indonesia come from a national personnel system. They gain advancement by moving from post to post, usually from one city to another. This limits their tenure in any city and severely limits the knowledge and commitment they can build to any specific city. Recognizing this condition, the central government of Indonesia has recently revamped its national system of urban administrators to keep them for longer periods, even a life time, in a single city. We have also noted that Thailand has a two part urban administrative system, marked essentially by gender. Men often move from city to city, gaining advancements as they move. Women administrators, on the other hand, tend to remain in one city for longer periods of time, largely because they have deep family ties in the city and do not wish to weaken these. The result is that women administrators are far more knowledgeable about their cities than their male counterparts.

We believe it is Kobe’s long term tenure of city officials that lies behind the unique capacity to combine both technical and social organizational solutions to any specific problem.

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2. A career of Service to Kobe City

An interview with Mr. Manabu Shinya

There are many examples of long-serving Kobe Government officials. One such case is the Executive Director of the International Communication Division of Kobe City government, Mr. Manabu Shinya. Over 29 years, he has served terms in 11 posts of various departments of the city government, amassing a wealth of knowledge of Kobe City policies, a broad range of inter-departmental contacts and colleagues, and a deep understanding of the departmental structure, policy implementation and citizens of Kobe.

From 1978, working for 3 years in the Public Relations Section of a local city ward office meant that from the outset Mr. Shinya learned the needs of Kobe citizens, and the way the city government was responding. Daily contact with citizens formed the base of a career working for their benefit.

The following five years (1981-1986) were spent working at the Environmental Bureau Labor Affairs Section, where knowledge of the internal city administration workings was obtained by dealing with labor management issues concerning 1400 refuse workers.

 With knowledge of both citizens’ requirements and the administration and management of Kobe City policies, further positions involved interaction with citizens over commercial leasing and residential planning, as Manager of the General Affairs Division of the Kobe City Promotion Company, and Manager of the Housing Planning Division of the Housing respectively.

As Manager of the Public Relations Division of the Mayor’s Office between 1993 and 1995, Mr. Shinya found himself at the center of the city’s administration at the time of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of January1995. At this time of great upheaval and disruption to the city as a whole, his role was to provide stricken Kobe residents with vital information on day-to-day survival, as well as to keep international media correspondents updated on the challenges that the city was facing to recover. As sad as the experience was, it was a heartwarming lesson in the value of communication between government departments, citizens, and the outside world.

After a term as General Affairs Bureau Ward Coordination manager, he oversaw the coordinated restructuring and merging of ward branch offices of Kobe City, which involved the complicated task of city government union negotiations and keeping residents informed of the redevelopment program details.

Subsequent terms as General Affairs Division Manager of the Kobe City Board of Education and Director of the Child Welfare Department of the Health and Welfare Bureau have further enhanced both working relationships within the Kobe City Government, and interaction with its citizens. Now he is working as Executive Director of the Department for International Communication and Cooperation, where he is overseeing the various sections’ international conferences, training and educational activities. In his 30th year as an official of Kobe City Government, Mr. Shinya is working at the forefront of Kobe’s continuing efforts to reach out to its Associate Cities and government administrations across the world - an example of the many Kobe City Officials and their career-long service to the city and its inhabitants.

A career in Kobe - positions held with Kobe City Governemnt by Mr. Shinya:

Questions and Answers

Q: What are the advantages or disadvantages of working in many different Kobe City Government departments throughout your career? 
A: I have been able to achieve broad, if not specialist, knowledge of a variety of policies concerning waste, sewage, education, and health, and the people who implement them. This means more access and communication between departments, and cooperation which brings good results. 

Q: What are the advantages or disadvantages of the change from one department to the next?
A: Moving is nerve-wracking and it takes time to build up relationships, but it’s good for leaders or managers to change departments, as opposed to, say, engineers. It’s not too difficult to move, but projects have to be carefully passed on to successors. 

Q: How much contact did you have with Kobe’s citizens during your time working in the Ward Offices? 
A: In the first public relations department position, I was dealing with citizens every day. I had little knowledge of Kobe City administration, so I had to learn a lot in a short time, by reading and asking questions. It was tough but I learned a lot. Through daily contact with citizens, I learned much about communication and diplomacy, and the value of listening to them. 

Q: How did that contact help you carry out your duties? 
A: The experience at the Ward Office was very useful to learn how to get very quick responses to requests, by going to the right section. It was effective to learn what could be promised, and the right bureau to respond. That experience could then be transferred to subsequent positions. Three years is a good term length - one year to ascertain the mission, a second to year to provide the right plan, and a third to implement it with two years experience, while realizing what needs to be done by successors. 

Conclusion

Through all of Mr. Shinya’s experiences, he maintains that the most important process has been to gradually gather general knowledge of the city government’s administrative workings, and the necessary communication skills to help the public. What is learnt in one post can help in the next, and broaden the perspective, and staying in one city’s administration ultimately keeps the momentum of that process – and perhaps more importantly, to build up relationships, which in Mr. Shinya’s words, are ‘the base of work’.