Meritocracy on Paper
The legendary satirical phrase “Morning Waiting for Evening” (PNS—a play on the Indonesian acronym for civil servants) has long cast a shadow over our bureaucracy, synonymous with officials who show up merely to mark attendance without any genuine intent to serve. Yet behind those same office desks sit dedicated public sector workers who perform their duties well and even drive organisational progress. Regrettably, this contrasting reality culminates in a single form of internal injustice: civil servants’ performance reports on paper are frequently rated uniformly as “Good”.
When civil servant (ASN) performance is rated as merely “good”, this does not necessarily reflect optimal public service quality if not accompanied by rigorous evaluation. This condition actually risks triggering organisational injustice. This phenomenon should serve as a warning to the government, which is attempting to build collaborative, capable, and integrity-driven bureaucratic reform.
Fictitious Performance Ratings for Public Sector Human Resources
Based on data from the State Personnel Board (BKN) in 2023, nationally more than 94% of civil servants were rated as “Good” performers, whilst approximately 5% received a “Very Good” rating. On the surface, these figures suggest a positive distribution of performance. However, analytically, the dominance of these ratings is actually a strong indicator that potential bias continues to exist in civil servant performance evaluations.
According to Tarigan et al. (2025) in an article titled “Are performance appraisals in the public sector fair? Exploring bias and best practices”, performance assessments in Indonesia’s public sector remain highly vulnerable to various biases and complex internal dynamics.
One of the primary problems is leniency bias. Rather than using performance evaluation as a strategic talent-mapping instrument, bureaucratic officials often take shortcuts by awarding “Good” ratings across the board. This decision is often driven by a desire to avoid conflict or fear that superiors will be perceived as “harsh” if they provide objectively low ratings.
When leaders fall victim to leniency bias, the result is a low-quality evaluation system. The consequences are highly destructive to the motivation of genuinely competent employees. They are vulnerable to demotivation because the system fails to differentiate contributions among staff members.
Moreover, when all employees are rated as “good”, talent pool mapping becomes obscured. Organisations struggle to identify which employees truly have the potential to fill key civil servant talent positions. Biased assessment standards ultimately weaken the effectiveness of human resources development programmes themselves.
Recalibrating Performance Management
Rather than remaining trapped in stagnation, it is time for public sector organisations to evaluate their performance management. Performance evaluation must be coupled with mentoring processes and continuous learning.
First, clarify performance expectation standards for each job level. Success indicators must be calibrated in accordance with actual workload—both for implementing positions and functional roles—to reduce the potential for ambiguity in performance assessment.
Second, implement a rigorous performance calibration mechanism. The BKN’s e-Kinerja application features will not be effective if not accompanied by calibration forums at the institutional level that serve to rationally differentiate levels of contribution amongst employees, preventing ratings from clustering around a particular rating category.
Third, development support should not be provided only after employees have already lost motivation. This requires routine meaningful performance dialogues built on top-down and bottom-up commitment.
Fourth, enhance supportive leadership capacity and provide anti-bias training for evaluators (rater training). Changing the format of written assessments will be meaningless if the mindset of those conducting the assessment is not improved. As Tarigan et al. (2025) emphasise, organisations need to mitigate bias by training supervisors to maintain uniform cognitive standards in assessing procedural and distributive fairness.
Ultimately, leniency bias is not an act of compassion. It is a silent error that gradually erodes meritocracy. The government’s aspiration to build world-class bureaucracy will never be achieved if the evaluation system remains full of falsehood. It is time for our meritocracy system to stop “subsidising” laziness, in order to realise genuine bureaucratic reform.