Mental switch a must for better ministry: Official
JAKARTA (JP): The foreign ministry must increase its standards of professionalism and internal coordination to further enhance its performance, a senior ministry official said here yesterday.
The secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdul Irsan, said the ministry needed to transform itself into a merit-based system with increased internal coordination in order to enter the 21st century as a modern organization.
"The current organization is a product of the 1980s which has been oriented to a sectoral job distribution and hierarchic career level," Irsan told a workshop on New Concepts and Strategies to Enhance Indonesia's Image Abroad.
Irsan said the ministry had developed a corporate culture in which each department in the ministry was inward-looking.
Hierarchies within each department were territorial regarding the projects assigned to them and coordination outside certain hierarchical structures was limited.
Moreover, he said, there is a mentality among the ministry's staff to merely pursue a hierarchic job status, instead of professionalism.
"Most of us (in the ministry) are not ready to accept that someone can be promoted for his or her performance, instead of for his or her seniority," Irsan said.
Irsan admitted that with the prevalence of such a "corporate culture", it has been difficult for the ministry to carry out its duties effectively as Indonesia faces an era of globalization.
He noted that the ministry's handling of projects and jobs was no longer suited in dealing with the intertwining issues in international relations.
Furthermore, he said, the ministry's hierarchical structure was deemed too slow in formulating concepts and action plans to deal with the multidimensional issues in international relations.
Irsan mentioned a number of global changes which have made management transformation an urgent need. These included the emergence of environmental, human rights and democratization issues.
He said that as part of the transformation to a "new" ministry of foreign affairs, the ministry had been drafting a foreign affairs bill and foreign affairs projection in the Seventh Five- Year Development Plan.
These two documents were expected to be the legal and operational basis for Indonesia's foreign affairs in the 21st century, he said.
"We have been an independent nation for 52 years, but we have not had any legal basis for foreign policy implementation," he said.
In his paper, Irsan also noted the strategic significance of the recent formation of the Indonesian Council on World Affairs (ICWA).
He said that ICWA was expected to be a think tank for Indonesian foreign policy.
The council is comprised of several former ambassadors along with respected military and foreign policy experts.
Meanwhile, assistant to the Armed Forces Chief of Sociopolitical Affairs Maj. Gen. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who also spoke at yesterday's workshop, admitted that a number of riots throughout the country during the last several years had given Indonesia a negative image.
He noted that events, such as the Dili Incident in 1991 and the Ujungpandang riots in 1996, remained a constant source of condemnation abroad despite the fact that authorities were already taking corrective measures.
The workshop also featured other speakers which included the University of Indonesia's mass communications expert Bachtiar Aly, former Indonesian ambassador to Vietnam Djafar Assegaff and an official of the National Development Planning Board, Fasli Jalal. (10)