Downsizing Cabinet

I am writing to comment on the National Resilience Institute alumni association (Ikal)'s proposals regarding the next Cabinet. It proposes that whoever wins the July 5 presidential election, appoint four coordinating ministers and 35 ministers (Pelita, June 9).

Such a bloated Cabinet line-up flies in the face of the public's disenchantment with the country's inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy -- a disenchantment that has been increasing since the emergence of the reform movement in 1997. The criticisms, ranging from lack of productivity on the part of civil servants, and swollen and ineffective central and local government organizations, etc., have prompted the government to undertake institutional as well as civil service restructuring and downsizing.

The Ikal study, with its proposal for some 39 ministerial posts in the next Cabinet, seems to ignore the reality that government institutions have for the last three-and-a-half decades been applying a strategy-follows-structure paradigm, meaning that the government sets up the organizational structures first, and strategy follows later. This approach only leads to a proliferation of government agencies, and is the complete opposite of the Robbins and Millet theory (2002), which says that structure should follow strategy, meaning that the government should first clearly establish the strategies, with the necessary organizations following later.

This has resulted in at least three problems: inefficient organizations and unproductive civil servants, the draining of government coffers in paying their salaries (compare with Robbin's theory of cost minimization), and rampant corruption.

In order to staunch the outflow of taxpayer's money, the government amended Government Regulation No. 84/2000 by Government Regulation No. 8/2003, which now allows provincial governments -- excluding Jakarta -- to establish a maximum of 10 agencies, and regental/municipal governments to establish up to 14 agencies.

However, when it comes to the central government, the ministerial offices bill, which was first moved in 2001, will still not be enacted before the new government takes office later this year. This bill envisages around 23 Cabinet posts as compared to the present 30.

The figure of 23 cabinet positions falls between Thailand's 22, and Malaysia's 24. However, it is well above the United States, which has 15 seats at the Cabinet table, and Japan with 14. So, if the Ikal proposal is accepted, inefficiency and bad governance, things that people have been fighting against, will persist for the foreseeable future.

M. RUSDI, Jakarta