Autonomous benefits
There is some good news regarding Indonesia's decentralization program, which was launched with a big bang in 2001 when the country was still reeling from the severe 1998 political and economic crisis.
Most people have seen improvements in the delivery of health services, education and administrative services in the aftermath of the regional autonomy laws, according to a governance and decentralization survey conducted jointly by the World Bank and Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta last year.
Earlier reports described how an increasing number of regional governments have been taking initiatives to attract investment, believing that only private investment, and not government, was capable of creating jobs and generating purchasing power for the people to fuel economic activity.
All these developments are in sharp contrast to the wide- spread excesses during the start-up period of regional autonomy, where most local administrations simply used their new-gained power as a short-cut to raise local taxes at the expense of the long-term good of the economy.
During the first year of the decentralization program, many businesses suddenly found themselves mired in imbroglios as regional administrations made claims they assumed to be legitimate according to their new-gained authority.
The survey found that the majority of respondents saw real improvements in their local public services following decentralization. Even the police, notorious as being among the most corrupt public institutions in the nation, were lauded for their quicker responses to public complaints and improvements in their general attitudes.
Even though the respondents said transaction costs of public services remained high -- as evidenced by the continued need to pay bribes and the high incidence of intermediaries for public services and continued importance of personal connections -- the positive public attitude towards regional autonomy could further improve the confidence in the benefits of decentralization.
This in turn could further encourage local people to exercise stronger scrutiny of officials and impose higher standards of accountability on regional executive chiefs. In this context we should welcome the beginning early this month of the new system of direct elections for regional leaders, such as governors, regents and mayors. A system of capable local and provincial authorities linked effectively with the central government could go a long way in improving service delivery and promoting balanced economic growth.
As weak institutions are one of the main problems encountered by the government, our future development will depend much on the capacity and performance of local and regional administrations.
More efficient delivery of public services is indeed one of the main objectives of regional autonomy. The program has transformed one of the most centralized countries in the world, and at the same time unleashed local initiatives and innovation in service delivery.
However, as the survey shows, corruption and inefficiency continue to threaten higher quality public services, meaning that decentralization has not yet made much progress in tackling corruption, high costs and personal connections in public service delivery that weigh most heavily on the poor.
This is part of a large unfinished agenda, which certainly will take some time to accomplish. However, as people begin to benefit directly from the positive impacts of regional autonomy, there will be stronger support for the process. This in turn will strengthen a more vibrant civil society at the local level and, combined with the direct election of regional leaders, will enhance accountability to the electorate.
Despite the encouraging progress over the past four years, much still has to be done to strengthen accountability at the local level.
Foremost among the tasks is the process of decentralizing the civil service. True, the administrative transfer of civil servants to local administrations has run well, but the spirit and letter of the civil service law still emphasizes centralized service, leaning towards a unified civil service that is accountable to the central service board in Jakarta, and not to the regions.
This goes contrary to the decentralization process and could eventually undermine the regional administration's ability to deliver public services. The central government and regional administrations should therefore work together to develop a system that enhances a more decentralized civil service and yet at the same time ensures the mobility of civil servants across regions.