Civil service reform, a forgotten agenda

Civil service reform, a forgotten agenda

Riyadi Suparno, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Civil service reform is not a new notion here, but has verily
been forgotten amid reforms in other sectors following the fall
of the New Order government.

In fact, civil service reform has been attempted several times
since the Soeharto era, but its implementation has been hit-and-
miss.

During the robust economic growth of 7 percent per annum in
the three decades before the Asian financial crisis in the late
1990s, Indonesia did not feel the need to reform its civil
service.

Worse, the authoritarian regime of Soeharto used the civil
service as an instrument for social and political control. In
fact, the bureaucracy had become powerful enough to create a
bureaucratic polity -- a bureaucracy for itself.

The deficiencies of the public sector in general and civil
service in particular have been documented and discussed in a
number of studies, including those by the World Bank and lately
by the Asian Development Bank.

These documents reveal the downsides of Indonesian
bureaucracy, including the disconnection of the civil service
from society, a hierarchical and patrimonial working culture, a
lack of public accountability and massive abuses of public funds
and corruptions.

Indeed, the country's civil service has been rated by the
Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) as one of the
worst in Asia.

In fact, there had been individual attempted reforms here and
there under Soeharto, but there had not been any concerted
efforts to reform the civil service.

Since the 1970s, Cabinets have included a minister for
administrative reform, but not enough headway was made.

The latest attempted reform in the civil service after the
fall of Soeharto began in 1999 with the amendment of the civil
service law (Law No. 8/1974) by Law No. 43/1999.

This attempted reform did not stand alone but was strongly
tied to an economic reform program under the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), which entered the country following the
financial crisis in 1997.

Unlike in other countries which were under the tutelage of the
IMF, civil service reform in Indonesia, however, has not been
part and parcel of the reform package demanded by the IMF.

Rather, it was a by-product of the massive decentralization
program, which has been pursued vigorously since the passage of
the decentralization law, Law No. 22/1999, which has been amended
into Law No. 32/2004.

In fact, the decentralization law itself lays the grounds for
partial civil service reform.

Under decentralization, local governments are now delivering a
far greater range of public services -- in fact all services are
decentralized except a few such as security and defense, foreign
affairs, fiscal and monetary policy, the judicial system and
religious affairs.

Local governments are also responsible for the planning,
budgeting and managing of those services. These require them to
reorganize their organizational structures to deliver their new
functions as well as to accommodate new staff members transferred
by the central government.

The decentralization law requires a fundamentally different
way of managing the civil service. Decentralization requires the
transfer of more than 2.1 million civil servants from the center
to the regions.

The law also gives the regions the authority to appoint civil
servants and to assume a number of personnel management functions
in accordance with nationally approved norms and procedures.
Implementing regulations issued later elaborated on these
devolved functions.

On top of the decentralization law, the amended civil service
law addresses specifically civil service management issues,
encompassing the decisions on norms, standards, procedures,
formations, appointments, civil service resources quality
development, transfer, salary, allowances, welfare, discharge,
rights and obligations.

The law mandates the establishment of a Civil Service
Commission to assist the President to formulate policies on those
management issues.

It confirms the regional government's human resource
management functions and stipulates the establishment of Regional
Civil Service Agencies as the lead agencies for human resource
management at the regional level.

However, the content of this amended civil service law retains
much of the control at the top, at the central government. The
implementing regulations issued later confirm this.

This law and the implementing regulations followed the
prevailing perception of the civil service as a kind of -- as
Prijono Tjiptoherijanto termed it -- "national glue" of this
diverse country.

But this law alone does not drive civil service reforms. The
implementation of the law itself has never been comprehensive.
This is understandable due to several changes of government in a
relatively short period of time, i.e. four governments have come
and gone since the reform era started in 1998.

Worse still, there has been little pressure from donors on the
new governments to pursue the civil service reform agenda
initiated by the previous governments.

The evidence of this could be cited from the fact that out of
24 Letters of Intent and their accompanying Memorandum of
Economic and Financial Policies -- which describe the policies
that Indonesia intended to implement in the context of its
request for financial support from the IMF -- only one signed in
September 2000 lightly addresses the issue of civil service
reform.

Moreover, out of the last five annual donor meetings convened
by the World Bank, only the meeting in December 2003 addressed
civil service reform in greater detail.

Toward the end of the reform program under the IMF, Megawati
Soekarnoputri issued in September 2003 Presidential Decree No.
5/2003 on the Economic Policy Package in Conjunction with the
Completion of the Government's Program with the IMF -- better
known as the White Paper -- which also contained reforms in civil
service.

The White Paper places emphasis on increasing the transparency
of public services. To achieve this, the White Paper envisages
the drafting of a bill on public service, the publication of
public service delivery standards and the move toward e-
government.

The President had in fact issued Presidential Instruction No.
3/2003 on National Policy on the Development of E-Government.

But, entering 2004, these initiatives ran aground as the
country was too busy with various political agendas, the
legislative election and direct presidential election. No efforts
had apparently been made to further attempt to reform the civil
service.

Now, hopes are again ignited as Indonesia has a new
government, with a strong President -- a President directly
elected by the people. We hope this time, the President will be
bold enough to set in motion the comprehensive reform of the
civil service.