Overlapping agencies ‘need’ reforms

JAKARTA: Sofian Effendi, a public administration expert from Gadjah Mada University, says that repositioning overlapping agencies in Indonesia is needed.

“There are 28 non-ministerial agencies that need to be redefined and repositioned because of overlapping roles,” he said in a national seminar on the redefinition of non-ministerial agencies in Indonesia held by the State Ministry of Administrative Reforms in Jakarta on Tuesday.

He gave an example: “We have a national commission for human rights, national commission on violence against women and a national commission for child protection. They all could be merged into one national commission for human rights.”

The overlapping roles, he said, caused state-budget inefficiencies.

“Thirty-eight percent of the state budget goes to those agencies, while ideally they should only use 25 per cent of the state budget,” he said. — JP