I.
Introduction This paper describes bureaucratic reform implementation in Indonesia. Global challenges have triggered governments in many countries to initiate fundamental change since three decades ago include Indonesia. Denhardt and Denhardt (2000) explained the dynamics of perspectives in governance based on relevant trends of global challenge: from Old Public Administration (OPA) to New Public Service (NPS). In the 1990’s, OPA perspective was criticized for its inefficiency of top-down authority and hierarchical administration.
New Public Management (NPM) offered a new perspective for government to be more market-oriented and decentralized among government institutions. As the distribution of information has been growing, citizens have been also demanding more accelerate public service, and participatory approach in policymaking. Therefore, in 2000’s, NPS perspective described the phenomenon of countries that used shared values and collaboration with citizens in policymaking (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2000). Following the changing paradigm of public administration, Indonesia has been implementing bureaucratic reform mainly to enhance public trust, increase development achievement and stimulating economic development (Presidential Decree No. 81/ 2010 about Bureaucratic Reform Grand Design of 2010-2025, page 3 and 28). Can bureaucratic reform achieve those three goals? Globally, studies suggested that bureaucratic efficiency is associated with economic growth and social development (Bjørnskov, C, 2012; Freckleton, & Craigwell, 2012; Libman, 2012; Perera and Lee, 2013). Primarily, the target of bureaucratic reform is to enhance economic growth, solving social problems, facing government development challenge, and improving public trust. Bureaucracy is a tool of policy making to implement public policy and serve the citizens (Supriyatno, 2014).
As adapted from Supriyatno (2014) concept of bureaucratic reform, this paper defines bureaucratic reform as a systematic governmental change to materialize the impact of policy implementation and serve citizens better. This paper first explains about government challenges in Indonesia and the urgency of the bureaucratic reform. Secondly, this paper describes bureaucratic reform policies, implementation, achievements and case studies. Finally, this paper analyses the implementation then draws recommendation for better bureaucratic reform implementation in Indonesia. II. Statement of ProblemIndonesia faces challenges in governance and economic growth since 2010.
Even though the percentile rank of government effectiveness in Indonesia increased from 46, 89 in 2010 to 53, 37 in 2016 (World Bank World Governance Index, 2016) the result indicates that Indonesia is still below average in quality of civil services and policymaking in general. Another measurement of bureaucratic performance was published in Doing Business Report. In 2010, Indonesia was ranked in 122 for doing business index, but, in 2017, Indonesia performed better in reforming policies in doing business.
The report ranked Indonesia in the position of 72nd in 2017. The report assesses the quality of the government and public service to serve the international and domestic market and investment based on 11 indicators of doing business (World Bank, 2018). However, compared to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, the overall procedures and time length for doing business in Indonesia are still longer and less effective. Indonesia still needs a lot of hard work in improving its bureaucracy particularly in employing information and communications technology (ICT) for better governmental performance and economic growth (World Economic Forum, 2017).
The technological and innovation readiness in Indonesia remains the biggest challenge since 2010. From those global challenges, it can be described that Indonesia generally faces challenges public service quality and policymaking. Old bureaucracy approach is no longer relevant in facing the challenges. Therefore, the bureaucracy needs to be reformed to accelerate its economic development and enhance public trust. III. Bureaucratic Reform PoliciesSince 2010, Indonesia has been legally implementing bureaucratic reform. The government mandated policies related to bureaucratic reform implementations such as:a. Presidential Decree No.
81/ 2010 about Bureaucratic Reform Grand Design of 2010-2025.b. Ministerial Decree of Bureaucratic Reform No. 20/ 2011 about 2010-2014 Bureaucratic Reform Road Map for the implementation of change management programs. c. Ministerial Decree of Bureaucratic Reform No. 11/ 2015 about 2015-2019 bureaucratic reform roadmap.
Those different policies are expected as basics for program development of bureaucratic reform in both the national and regional levels. Based on these regulations, there are three objectives of bureaucratic reform, namely; 1. Clean and accountable bureaucracy; 2. Effective and efficient bureaucracy; and 3. The high quality of public services.
To achieve these three targets, the program will be implemented in eight areas: a. Effective change management. This area describes how strategic the bureaucratic reform roadmaps in each local government and central government institutions are. Some things that indicate effective change management are; verified empirical evidence of the problem statement in the roadmap, participative and representative task force team for bureaucratic reform, and clear timeline output targets. b. Effective legislation regulation. This area describes zero overlapping regulation from the top of legislation structure to the bottom of the structure.
It also could be zero overlapping regulations among sectors. c. Cleared, effective and efficient procedure of governance.
This area defines the clear and transparent government procedures particularly in delivering public service. Therefore, if citizens are unsatisfied, they have the legal standard to sue public service providers. d.
Efficient organizational structure. This area describes right-sized organizational structure based on each organization’s function, and workloads. e.
Competent and efficient human resources apparatus. This area describes the competency and the efficient quantity of human resource based on analysis about organization functions and workloads. The analysis is drawn from organization vision, mission and goals.
f. Accountable government. This area compares the government performance achievement, and the government goals and target planned.
They should be matched. g. Effective surveillance.
This area means that the government applies whistleblowing system, and complaint management system. Those systems must be easily accessed by everyone when there are misappropriation and abuse of civil service, and authority. h. Enhanced quality of public service.
This area is mostly evaluated by the Ombudsman review and also citizen’s satisfactory.
