on subcontractors. Other ongoing efforts include the promotion of information sharing between purchasers and contractors through the transmission of design philosophy from the designer to the constructor to assure the quality of work objects and in-process inspections on a trial basis to confirm the status of construction through the entire sequence of construction processes.

In August 2011, amendments to the “Guidelines on the Measures Taken to Promote Proper Tendering and Contracting for Public Works” were approved at a Cabinet meeting to fuel further improvement of the tendering and contracting system, ushering in the “Regional Maintenance Type Contracting Method” as a new method of contracting to help acquire supporters of regional maintenance projects (disaster recovery, snow clearance and infrastructure maintenance and management projects) and to encourage the central and local governments, etc. to leverage diverse methods of ordering, such as blanket ordering to cover both design and construction and construction-managed ordering.

General competitive bidding was implemented in about 95.6% of the works carried out by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism during FY2011, with about 99.1% of the works adhering to the total evaluation bidding method (all by value). The policy of procurement that provides an excellent mix of pricing and quality continues into FY2012 and after. As a solution to the problems with the total evaluation bidding method, such as increased workload, etc. on both purchasers and contestants in fulfilling their paperwork procedures relating to the preparation and review of technical proposals, suggested improvement on the total evaluation method, such as simplifying it to polarize between two versions, i.e., one evaluating construction capabilities and the other evaluating technical proposals, have been tried with a view to their full-scale application. Local governments have been urged to toughen their countermeasures against dumping, such as reviewing the reference prices for verifying low bid prices and to review the scheme of prior announcement of predetermined prices to drive the normalization of tendering and contracting.

## Section 6 Driving the Implementation of Transport Policy

Transport means the spatial movement of human beings or materials. Transport has enriched and enhanced the knowledge, expertise, etc. that make up a culture through human and material exchanges, contributing to the prosperity of humankind. In this sense, transport should mean more than a mere means for human beings but it can be thought of as a source of vitality needed by people to live a cultural, future-centric creative life in their lives as human beings.

Transport policy has now come to a major turning point amid rapid changes in the socio-economic climate, such as dwindling population with falling birthrates and growing urges to combat global warming and also to build a disaster-immune national land and communities particularly in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Among the evolving challenges for transport, for example, reinforcing the networks of international and arterial traffic that supports the recovery of the national economy and maintaining the substitutability and multiplicity of the networks to provide against natural disasters has become an issue of pressing concern. Regional public transport, in the mean time, is jeopardized as it is increasingly difficult to maintain. Assuring regional public transport is sought to sustain and animate communities.

In the circumstances, a legislation is being explored as a framework of driving the implementation of transport policy through collaboration and partnership among various stakeholders concerned.

## Section 7 Policy Evaluations, Project Evaluations and Interactive Administration

## 1 Driving Policy Evaluations

Based on the “Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Basic Plan for Policy Evaluations,” the three schemes of policy evaluation, namely, policy assessments (Project Evaluation Method), policy checkups (Performance Evaluation Method) and policy reviews (Comprehensive Evaluation Method) are defined as a tool of achieving the following three goals: