Bamsoet Urges Acceleration of Central-Regional Bureaucratic Reform

Member of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR RI) from the Golkar Party faction, as well as the 15th Speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR RI) and Deputy Chairman for Political, Legal and Security Affairs at the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN Indonesia), Bambang Soesatyo (Bamsoet), is urging central and regional governments to accelerate bureaucratic reform oriented towards results and tangible impact for the public. Bureaucratic reform must be positioned as an instrument to improve how the state works, speed up public services, strengthen public trust, and simultaneously enhance people’s welfare.

Bureaucratic reform is also one of the key prerequisites for the success of development towards Indonesia Emas 2045, especially as President Prabowo Subianto has designated the National Bureaucratic Reform Grand Design (DBRBN) 2026-2045 as part of implementing the Indonesia Emas 2045 vision and the Asta Cita.

Bamsoet also outlined the role of Commission II of the DPR RI in overseeing bureaucratic reform policy, which encourages accelerating the quality of public services and increasing budget allocations for regional governments.

He made these remarks while speaking at the National Coordination Meeting of Regional Secretaries at the Ministry of Home Affairs. Other speakers included Secretary General of the Ministry of Home Affairs Tomsi Tohir, Deputy for Bureaucracy, Apparatus Accountability and Supervision at the Ministry of State Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reform Erwan Agus Purwanto, and Assistant Deputy for Bureaucratic Reform at the Ministry of State Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reform Agus Uji Hantara.

“Bureaucratic reform must be seen as a transformation of how the state works, delivers services, builds public trust, and improves people’s welfare. The measure is simple: whether the public receives services that are faster, easier, cheaper, more transparent, and fairer,” said Bamsoet on Thursday (20/8/2026).

“If the public still has to deal with convoluted procedures, slow services, unintegrated data, or uncertainty in obtaining services, then our bureaucratic reform is not yet complete,” he continued.

He explained that regional governments are the decisive point for the success of national bureaucratic reform because more than two-thirds of public services that directly affect the public are delivered by regional governments. Therefore, policies formulated by the central government will not work well if they are not effectively translated at the provincial, regency and city levels.

Challenges still encountered include organisations working in silos, unintegrated data, partial digitalisation, weak digital governance, civil servant transfers and quality not yet fully based on a merit system, political intervention, fiscal capacity gaps, and disparities in human resource quality.

“The central government can formulate good policies, but their success is largely determined by implementation in the regions. If regional bureaucracies continue to work in isolation, data is not integrated, digitalisation proceeds partially, and civil servant management is not yet fully merit-based, then the public will continue to experience slow and convoluted services. Therefore, transformation must reach the service units closest to the public,” said Bamsoet.

Bamsoet noted that governance gaps between central and regional levels remain a serious problem. Several regions, particularly outside Java, still face limited apparatus capacity, suboptimal implementation of electronic-based government systems, fiscal constraints, weak data integration, and political intervention in bureaucratic management. These problems risk stalling bureaucratic reform without producing concrete changes in people’s lives.

“The DPR RI, through its oversight function, continues to ensure that bureaucratic reform operates within a framework of checks and balances. Oversight is not about finding fault with the government, but about ensuring that policies run effectively, accountably, transparently, and produce tangible benefits. We must be bold enough to measure whether permits are getting faster, services are becoming easier, investment is increasing, poverty is falling, public satisfaction is rising, civil servants are becoming more professional, and corruption is declining,” said Bamsoet.

Bamsoet explained that the position of Regional Secretary holds a strategic role as the driver of cross-agency coordination. Therefore, the role of the Regional Secretary needs to be strengthened as both chief administrative officer and chief transformation officer in the region. This means the Regional Secretary must be able to ensure that all regional agencies move in one policy direction, rather than operating independently based on sectoral interests.

A collaborative, innovative, adaptive and results-oriented work culture is a prerequisite for bureaucratic reform to produce consistent change.

“Regional Secretaries must become the engine of bureaucratic transformation in their regions. The Regional Secretary holds a strategic position to integrate regional agencies, unify data, strengthen coordination and ensure that every programme has clear targets and measurable outcomes. Poverty, stunting, inflation, investment, food security, education, health and public services cannot be solved by a single regional agency working alone,” Bamsoet elaborated.

Bamsoet stressed the importance of building a more measurable and continuously monitorable bureaucratic reform oversight system. He encouraged collaboration between the DPR RI, the Ministry of Home Affairs, regional governments, academics, the business community and civil society, including through the development of a National Bureaucratic Reform Dashboard that can be monitored in real time by the central government and the DPR RI, particularly Commission II.

The system is expected to provide a clearer picture of bureaucratic reform progress while identifying regions that require policy intervention.

“Modern oversight must be based on outcomes and impact. We need to build integration of all national data, strengthen the civil service merit system, accelerate integrated digitalisation of public services, and increase capacity,” Bamsoet concluded.