Transforming Indonesia's civil service

Transforming Indonesia's civil service

By Raphael Lengesa Nombo

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The 1980s and 1990s are viewed as very
challenging and meaningful decades for civil service reform in
most developing countries. The global wind of change that
questioned the growth of public bureaucracies, coupled with
increasing inefficiency and loss of confidence in the civil
service hitherto, posed a serious challenge to different
governments to quest for a meaningful civil service reform, the
cornerstone for building effective governments.

For example, the economic crisis which was experienced by the
government of Indonesia in the early 1980s had a very significant
implication in the reformation of state administration.

One important aim of civil service reform is to contribute to
the change, development and dissemination of promising management
approaches in order to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and
integrity in the public sector's productivity.

There are many specific variables in the bureaucracy which
link its relationship to individual behavior and how their
interactions may influence reform within the civil service.

First, technological advances can pressure civil services to
change their structures, procedures, goals and methods of
operation. Second, increasing costs and scarcity of resources in
the bureaucracy are imperative variables, which can also
influence reform.

Third, higher levels of education and training in the labor
market may also influence change in the civil service. Fourth,
new organizational strategies and public servants' (employees)
attitudes and behavior may also count as contributing factors of
civil service reform.

To deal with change, bureaucracy, once it realizes that it
faces these challenges, uses two major ways to justify the need
for reform. First, the bureaucracy may react to the signs that
change is needed, making piecemeal modifications on dealing with
particular problems as they arise.

Second, the civil service may develop a program of planned
change, making significant investments in time and other
resources to alter the ways on how the bureaucracy may operate.
All these indicators are very important to understand because in
one way or another they are related to individual behavior, which
may ultimately influence change in the civil service system.

Despite realizing all these conditions, however, in developing
countries, the bureaucratic reform process has not always been a
smooth deal. The question is whether our bureaucrats are ready
for and committed to civil service reform. Analysts argue that
the meaning of reform has been muddled (The Jakarta Post, Aug.
13) by technocrats.

In developing countries, the greatest threat to bureaucratic
reform sometimes comes from the status quo group, which resists
change for its own reasons.

In the process of achieving reform, resistance to change has
originated from higher-ranking public officials who are uncertain
of their future managerial posts and their jobs. Occasionally,
public servants have feared becoming victims of downsizing and
retrenchment. Why is this so? First, uncertainty about the causes
and effects of change have set bureaucrats into stages of fearing
reform.

Second, it is feared sometimes that reform may disrupt
existing relations and patterns of behavior, like the
institutionalized corruption, collusion and nepotism. Third,
reform is suspected to threaten an individual's status and
financial rewards.

Fourth, awareness of weaknesses in the proposed change, that
is, doubts regarding the technical feasibility of the proposed
reform. Nonetheless, the influence of a group of norms and values
that oppose change makes bureaucrats fear reform.

Furthermore, the threat of having to retrain and acquire new
skills in order to cope with altered working methods is an
important consideration. Here, the argument which is advanced by
the technocrats is based on lack of financial resources in the
implementation of reform.

Feelings of personal inadequacy against new technologies, like
fear of not being able to understand a newly installed computer
system, have undermined reform efforts.

In developing countries, civil services have two competing
goals. First, task performance/service delivery and second,
political incorporation. The first is the subject of civil
service reform, but is often the secondary goal.

The second is often the primary goal, that is, incorporating a
politically selected group as a means of political control, on
terms which do not give most of them a say in government policies
but does give them a subordinate place in the hierarchies of
political control. Political incorporation through patronage is
an effective control tool used by political elites since jobs are
limited and as a result, there is pressure by extended family
members, ethnic affiliates, school mates and so forth.

Central features of such civil services include solidarity,
the relative insignificance of specialized expert knowledge to
bureaucratic roles, important rules neither transparent nor
codified, a forgiving attitude to inefficiency and poor
performance of assigned tasks and idiosyncratic bureaucratic
careers.

Reforms such as downsizing and rightsizing not only threaten
the career of civil servants in such settings but also threaten
the system of political control and stability. These reforms also
threaten the well-being of the network of kin, etc., supported by
the job holders.

Clay Wescott (1996) argues that bureaucrats in such settings
may take advantage of reform programs (like downsizing) to get
rid of political opponents and to refill the positions with
relatives and ethnic cohorts.

This shortcoming, which is common and widely debated in the
bureaucratic circle undermines the civil service reform agenda in
most developing countries. Gerald E. Caiden (1982) attributes
that vested interests have managed to block administrative reform
and in this case, public officials have not acted with vigor or
boldness to change the prevailing arrangements of the civil
service.

This pattern to fail achieving public administration reform is
contributed to by these factors. First, the sheer volume of
public business in the administrative state makes it virtually
impossible for public leaders to deal with more than a small
fraction with the advent of big government.

When government was smaller, it was possible for bureaucrats
to know much more of what was going on. Second, the
administrative role of the bureaucrats has been transformed from
being concerned mainly with details of policy implementation to
responsibility for policy initiation and selection, the
management of huge, complicated organizations and the
personification of the government to the governed. Technocrats
have assumed heavy obligations and bear great responsibility,
which reinforces their traditional cautionary attitudes.

Third, civil services that have been in existence for an
appreciable period of time are no longer instrumental but
institutional. Bureaucracies are not entirely at the mercy of
their external environment for they can control some aspects of
it; certainly they can create and manipulate their own clientele
just as international organizations have reamed to do. In
contrary, bureaucracies have developed independent power. They
exploit external allies and make alliances with the vested
interests they serve.

Fourth, bureaucracies have no competitors, no rivals, no
private counterparts capable of replacing them. Civil services
have a virtual monopoly of talent, expertise, experience and
knowledge in their jurisdiction. Bureaucracies are the only
professionals. Anyone outside who wants to be considered an
expert has to depend on their willingness to supply the requisite
information and their accreditation.

Furthermore, the subjects of civil service reforms are large-
scale organizations which tend to be rigid, conservative, custom
bound and slow moving. The more people that have to be won over,
the harder it is to convince them all. Last, civil service reform
is much harder than it used to be. There are few easy, obvious
targets. Past reforms have dealt with the grosser form of mal
administrations. Wrong doings, as far as anyone can tell, are
nowhere heard to be as bad as they once were. Consequently, much
of the passion has gone out of the issue.

Nevertheless, the climax of reform failures in developing
nations is clearly explained by a lack of finance and limited
budget resources. The editorial comment in the Post of June 17
correctly noted: "With limited budget resources and huge
servicing burden imposed by about US$75 billion in foreign debts
(treasury bonds), the new government will face major hurdles to
meaningful civil service reform, the cornerstone for building
good governance."

These shortcomings have made most governments in developing
countries not to be taken serious by the public as committed to
the Civil Service reform agenda.

The writer is currently a Postgraduate student in Public
Administration Program at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta.
He is a civil servant at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
International Cooperation in Tanzania.