Downsizing Cabinet

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