Professional civil service key to recovery

Professional civil service key to recovery

Edi Suhardi , Programme Advisor, Partnership for Governance
Reform in Indonesia, Jakarta

Public services in Indonesia have been labeled as lethargic
and mired in low productivity and red tape. An undemocratic and
inward-looking public service regime has ended up with the
concentration and corruption of power as its inevitable
consequence. This bleak feature was the precursor to the worst-
ever economic crisis to hit the country in the late 1990s.

For more than 30 years, civil servants did not serve the
public but rather the needs of a ruling group. This was
institutionalized in the form of the civil servants corps,
Korpri, with compulsory membership for all government employees,
for 32 years. Korpri, an organization tethered to the central
government, was effective in maintaining government officials'
allegiance to the ruling party and ensuring the loyalty of
regional governments to the central government.

Public service reform is inevitable in the new democratic era
under a decentralized regime of governance. However, services
have faced a formidable challenge in revamping both their
internal operations and repositioning themselves within a
changing environment.

President Megawati remarked, in Lembang before Korpri members
in December 2003, that civil servants would be neutral in the
2004 election. Furthermore, the state minister of administrative
reforms reiterated that public services would maintain their
neutrality.

The office of the state ministry is undertaking reforms to
achieve three targets: namely, improving professionalism geared
toward efficiency and better performance, and securing the
neutrality and improved welfare of civil servants. However, the
moves have faced a number of hurdles, including synchronization
with the context of decentralization and regional autonomy, and
bickering between central government agencies. Challenges to
reform public services have mainly originated from the absence of
concerted efforts of all concerned in central government to
establish an agenda for reform.

Most reform efforts are politically motivated and externally
programmed by partisan interests, rather than managerially
induced and evolved from within the bureaucracy. Efforts to
reform public services have been met with indifference, having
been the privilege of central government through a top-down,
trickle approach.

At least two factors have contributed to the minimal impact of
reform, i.e. no clear direction and proper legal instruments to
make reform a reality, and an absence of a democratic mechanism.
Efforts have merely focused on an internal system of structural
and functional features, but overlooked the need for
democratization. The concept of democratization of public
services is usually eschewed, although it represents the hard
core of reform.

That is the reason why Korpri has remained intact in the
current reform era. It has been preserved as a political tool of
central government to control regional governments. The overhaul
of Korpri is seen as a pragmatic initiative to democratize and
stimulate a holistic public service reform.

It is about time for a total reform of public services in
Indonesia. The efforts must center on the remedy of the many ills
that have arisen from an autocratic and centralistic regime over
three decades. These include democratization of public services
and promulgation of a new public service law.

A new direction for the democratization of public services
will likely encounter repercussions from both political and
bureaucratic establishments in the process of readaption to a new
context.

Democratization is to aim at creating a new approach, i.e.
enabling public scrutiny, partnership with other stakeholders, as
well as creating a service-oriented mechanism and an accountable
system. Public services should be given freedom to organize
themselves on the basis of needs at local, provincial and
national level.

Within the context of decentralization and democratization,
the existence of Korpri, as a political machine, is obviously
irrelevant. Korpri needs to undergo total reform to renew its
mandate in the new governance and redefine its organizational
structure. Otherwise, Korpri should be dissolved when members do
not feel the urgency of such an institution.

Korpri at national level should be redesigned to become a
confederation of locally based public service organizations. A
new decentralized public service association, if deemed
necessary, should be initiated by the officials themselves, and
evolved through a participatory, bottom-up mechanism to the
national level.

Democratic public service, fully people-governed, prevents
institutional influence and pressure from political parties and
interest groups at local and national level. It will both
accommodate the diversity of regional interests and enhance
national stability and unity.

Decentralization does not mean only restructuring public
administration: It also refers to its functions. The capacity of
the civil service to manage decentralization and its ability to
make good strategic public policy is the key to implementation of
reform. In essence, public administration is the most important
aspect of the decentralization framework (Christine Fletcher,
2003).

A decentralized public service can raise the quality and
access to services that benefit the poor. It allows closer
involvement of the representatives of the poor in public policy
making, thereby enhancing its pro-poor nature, its accountability
and the sustainability of its outcomes.

But decentralization also involves some risks that should not
be underestimated: Local government can be captured by local
elites, regional disparities can be deepened or central
government can disclaim responsibility for the poor. The public
sector symbolizes a mixture of central and regional interests.

Local government reforms are now gradually shaping new
attitudes in public service management, adapting more to local
interest, and thus affect the nature of public service in many
specific areas. Such development should be taken into account in
reforming public services in Indonesia.

Democratization and reform of the public sector should be
institutionalized within a policy and regulatory framework. All
public service-related legislation should be reviewed and further
amended, reflecting the needs of a newly reformed and democratic
public administration, and consolidated under public service
laws. Under such circumstances, Law 43/1999 on amendment of Law
8/1974 (the ordinance of the civil service) needs to be reviewed.

The proposed law should mirror a climate that is both reform-
minded and democratized. It needs to incorporate at least three
components: 1) the institutionalization of democracy and
enablement of public participation; 2) the mainstreaming of good
governance to ensure effective and efficient use of resources and
a more accountable administration; and 3) improved performance in
the articulation of the public interest, with a new standard of
measurement for public services.

The Indonesian recovery is inexorably linked to the level of
public service reform. A new, democratic public service would be
an important force to overhaul the inner workings of the
government toward accountability, an outward-looking approach and
service-oriented platform. On the contrary, a failure by public
services to respond to the rapid changes in governance will bring
about further disintegration of the country.