Fighting corruption through civil service reform

Fighting corruption through civil service reform

Riyadi Suparno, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia, the top dog in the corruption industry, has again
taken out top spot in a list of Asia's most corrupt countries.
This time, the rating comes from Hong-Kong-based Political and
Economic Risk Consultancy.

This status as the most corrupt country in Asia has been
earned, ironically, at a time when Indonesia's anti-corruption
drive is in high gear, with the staging of the first corruption
trial spearheaded by the newly-established Corruption Eradication
Commission (KPK).

It is an irony that corruption continues unabated despite the
fact that we have developed all the necessary legal means to
bring white collar criminals to justice, including the
establishment of the powerful KPK.

Does this mean that all our anti-corruption efforts are doomed
to failure? The fact is we shall certainly fail if we persist in
just pursuing corruption from the tail of the process, and not
from the roots.

Indeed, South Korea's experience in fighting corruption could
serve as a good example for Indonesia. Korea's various legal
measures to root out corruption also resulted in failure.

Speaking at a seminar here recently, Yunwon Hwang, a professor
of public administration at Seoul-based Chung-Ang University,
attributed the failure to a lack of internal consciousness among
civil servants -- the main perpetrators of corruption.

Therefore, on top of these legal measures, we also need to
supplement our anti-corruption drives with efforts to attack
corruption at its roots.

So, what exactly are the roots of corruption? Vice President
Jusuf Kalla in a recent interview with The Jakarta Post clearly
identified two major sources of corruption in Indonesia: an
unreformed bureaucracy and opaque government procurement
practices.

If indeed this is the case, then the answer to corruption
should therefore be to reform the bureaucracy and the government
procurement system. This article, however, shall limit itself to
discussing civil service reform.

The government seems to have recognized the problem of our
hopelessly corrupt bureaucracy and even identified possible
causes. The government has even drawn up various laws and
regulations to address the problems.

On paper, existing laws and regulations relating to the civil
service are consistent with international standards. Attempts at
bureaucratic reform started with a directive issued by the
People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) in 1998 that called for a
clean civil service, free from "KKN" -- an Indonesian language
acronym for corruption, collusion and nepotism. Existing laws and
regulations are consistent with this MPR's directive: KKN is
forbidden.

And yet, corrupt practices in the civil service persist
unabated.

Clearly, the gap between laws and their implementation and
enforcement remains very wide indeed. The rules are clear, but
implementation and enforcement lags way behind.

Any Indonesian government would be continuously frustrated in
attempting to work with a bureaucracy like this. It should be no
surprise that any attempt to institute any kind of policy reform
is doomed to failure, sabotaged by a conservative and self-
seeking bureaucracy.

There are a few exceptions, however. One successful attempt at
reform was the massive transfer of 2.1 million civil servants
from the central to local governments in 2000 and 2001, which
surprisingly did not cause much of a furor. This transfer was
part of a massive decentralization program that was being pursued
by the government of that time -- decentralization could thus
probably be counted as one of the most successful reforms ever
carried out.

Following the end of the transfer program in 2001, there were
some 1.3 million civil servants in the center, and 2.6 million in
the regions. Local civil servants accounted for some 66.7 percent
of civil servants in 2001, compared to a mere 12.2 percent in
1999.

Certain local governments have themselves devised retrenchment
mechanisms to rid themselves of redundant civil servants
following the massive transfer. Many have also successfully
restructured their bureaucratic organizations to better serve the
people.

However, the government of the day did not use this momentum
to further reform the civil service, or to allow local
governments to go deeper in pursuing a quality civil service for
their particular regions. Instead, the central government took
back the rights to control civil servants and implemented a
unified national career civil service.

Now long overdue, the new government has taken an initiative
to replace most of the 700 existing top echelon bureaucrats over
the next three years.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla explained that one of the main
reasons for replacing them was because they did not perform.

The move, disregarding any political motives, is actually
laudable. The problem is that it stands alone, and is not part of
a wider, more wide-ranging reform package for the civil service.

Another drawback of this move is that the new positions would
only be open for civil servants, who are not among the best
candidates for the positions.

If the government is serious about improving the civil
service, then it should consider opening up the field, giving way
for the best talent outside the bureaucracy to compete for top
echelon positions.

If necessary, the government should use this opportunity to
launch other reforms by opening up all higher echelon positions
to outside competition. This way, the government could set
performance targets for new officials. And this could then become
an initial step towards implementing systems of performance
management in the civil service, which has been implemented
successfully in many Commonwealth countries such as Britain,
Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

If performance management is too hard to implement in
Indonesia, then the government should devise other reform plans
that will not fail in the implementation stage. Whatever the
plan, it must attack the systemic corruption of the bureaucracy.

Whatever reforms are made, the government must empower the
clients of the civil service -- the people -- through more
transparency.

To this end, the government and the House of Representatives
must give priority to deliberating a freedom of information bill.
Freedom of information -- if passed into law -- would initiate a
process of transparency that would subject the civil service to
much closer scrutiny by the people.