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s a pragmatic person, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is straightforward and keen to uncover reality. Since his first day in office, the new governor spent time out of the office by touring the slums of the city, meeting with State-Owned Enterprises Minister Dahlan Iskan, paying the Jakarta military commander a visit, inspecting district and sub-district offices and so on.

All is targeted at the self-discovery of facts on the ground and embracing all Jakartans to jointly cope with multi-dimensional challenges facing the capital.

Now that analysts suggest that administrative reform be the heart of public service improvements in Jakarta, it would be wise for Jokowi to take this humble advice into consideration.

Why? Because an insider could frankly say that former governor Fauzi Bowo did not see the facts on the ground as he took advice from high-ranking officials only.

Indeed, advice from high-ranking officials could be inadequate as these people may prioritize self interests or their advice may be highly distorted by the asal bapak senang (as long as the boss is happy) attitude. The existing bureaucracy and its culture tend to hinder the constructive flow of fresh and bias-free ideas from the bottom.

The Jakarta Administration may boast its reform initiatives as the administration officially commenced the reform agenda in 2008, ahead of the official agenda launched by the national government in 2010.

Administrative reform — widely known as bureaucratic reform — was initiated in 2008 through the enactment of Gubernatorial Regulation No. 43/2008 on bureaucratic reform and Gubernatorial Regulation No. 612/2008 on bureaucratic reform team, prior to the endorsement of the 2010-2025 Reform Grand Design and the 2010-2014 Reform Road Map by the national government in 2010.

To date, administrative reform in Jakarta is executed as a stand-alone project called “Bureaucratic Reform” under “Implementation of Good Governance Principles in the Administration” of the Medium-term Regional Development Plan 2007-2012.

The project was executed by the Civil Service Board with a limited budget to cover the whole spectrum of administrative reform. In effect, the project is manifested in regular workshops/seminars on developing shared value, installing positive mindsets and strengthening teamwork among bureaucrats.

Present reform execution entails several drawbacks. First, the benefit expected from the workshops/seminars is less tangible and difficult to measure.

Jokowi’s discovery of nonattendance of heads of district/subdistrict and unattended service counters during his impromptu visit to the district/sub-district offices cast doubt over the benefit of such workshops/seminars on professional bureaucracy.

Second, within the bureaucracy where sectoral egocentricity across functions is high, the execution of reform as a stand-alone project by a particular agency may be perceived as a monopoly by others. Consequently, other agencies may not share an equal sense of responsibility in carrying out the reform process.

Lastly, since administrative reform is narrowly defined, the measurement of public service improvements as part of reform in a broader context is excluded.

What can the Jokowi administration do to accelerate the reform? The straightforward answer is to apply the Guideline of Administrative Reform for Local Government adopted by the Administrative Reforms Ministry through Ministerial Regulation No. 30/2012.

As the guideline mandates the establishment of a team to oversee the reform, the new Jakarta administration is required to revise the existing structure of the administrative reform team accordingly.

Extracting the roles and responsibilities of the local government emphasized by the guidelines, the team has successfully constructed the 2012-2017 Regional Administrative Reform Road Map and submitted the proposal to the respective Ministry by the deadline.

The Reform Road Map serves as a trajectory in achieving reform objectives and in benchmarking the accomplishments of the targeted performance indicators. The execution of reform programs and projects is then to be initiated in 2013.

A crucial point at this stage is to align reform objectives emphasized by the reform trajectory with the development objectives emphasized by the development trajectory. In other words, reform objectives in nine different areas: change management, regulatory alignment, organization and functions, procedures, human resources management, supervision, accountability, public service quality improvement and monitoring and evaluation — should ideally be incorporated into the Medium-term Regional Development Plan 2012-2017, which is currently still in the drafting process.

The Development Plan will be ratified as Regional Regulation by the city council. Reform objectives of the Reform Road Map will serve as a development program for the Medium-term Regional Development Plan for the next four years.

As the administration’s strategic priority, administrative reform is then tagged as “dedicated development program”, i.e. a high priority development program that has a broad impact on public interests.

The dedicated development program entitled “Administrative Reform” can be divided into several sub-titles according to different areas of reform, for instance “Human Resources Management” can clustered cross-functional agencies to handle the issue of optimizing distribution, quantity and quality of civil servants for the next five years.

The Civil Service Board can focus on overall human resource planning projects to optimize distribution, and quantity and quality of civil servants. It would also cover issues such as productivity, remuneration, and reward and punishment, etc.

The Organization Bureau can focus on projects related to the evaluation of appropriate organizational structure and the precise number of civil servants needed. The Training and Education Board can focus specifically on projects related to training program necessities derived from human resource planning.

Ultimately, there will be no more stand-alone project called “Bureaucratic Reform” executed by a single agency. This approach will urge leading agencies in the area of human resource management to cooperatively accomplish the respective reform objectives. A similar approach is intended to promote an equal sense of responsibility across functions and to accelerate reform in all areas.

The writer is a civil servant currently assigned as international cooperation officer at the Bureau for Gubernatorial Affairs and International Cooperation at the Jakarta administration. The opinions expressed are his own.