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.