Following in the footsteps of the Jakarta administration, which has put in place a system that allows government agencies to hold open-call recruitment for civil-servant positions, the central government is planning to implement open recruitment in all ministries starting next year.

Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Yuddy Chrisnandi said on Friday that the open-call recruitment was part of a scheme to overhaul the country'€™s bureaucracy, which has long been plagued by corruption and populated by incompetent civil servants.

'€œThe open-call recruitment is to find public officials with quality, integrity and capability. We need to be open [in the recruitment system] as we have arrived in the era of competition and we need to upgrade the skills of civil servants,'€ Yuddy told reporters.

Yuddy said that the open-call recruitment was mandated in Law No. 5/2014 on civil and state servants.

However, the law stipulates that only active civil servants qualify to join the selection process and that it only applies to positions in echelon I and II.

Echelon I usually refers to the position of a director general while echelon II is a director-level position or the head of a division.

• Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister says all ministries will have open-call recruitment next year
• Professionals to be able to join selection process
• KPK applauds the process as it could improve meritocracy

Yuddy said that the government would soon issue a regulation to allow professionals to join the selection process.

'€œBefore we issue the regulation, the open-call recruitment can only involve active civil servants,'€ he said.

Yuddy, a NasDem Party politician, said that the new regulation would be ready by the time the open recruitment started.

'€œHopefully the regulation will be ready in the next three months, so early next year we can [start implementing the system in all ministries],'€ he said.

As to how many positions would be available, Yuddy said it would depend on individual ministries.

'€œFor example, the Finance Ministry recently announced that it would conduct open-call recruitment for its tax directorate-general position. Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said also just announced such a thing,'€ he said.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry is currently evaluating which of its units will offer vacancies for top positions.

Under the plan, only the positions of officials failing to perform well would be offered.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry'€™s secretary-general, Teguh Pamuji, said that the most urgent position was that of oil and gas director general, given the high number of applications for permissions as well as the amount of paperwork that a new official has to handle.

Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) chairman Abraham Samad applauded the open-call recruitment, saying that it was necessary to eradicate the practice of nepotism and favoritism prevalent in the bureaucracy.

'€œWe want to push a just system of promotion,'€ Abrahaman said on Friday.

Samad said that under the current system, where a minister could appoint any candidate to fill a top position based on his or her preferences, the antigraft body would have a difficult time taking preventive measures against corruption.

'€œIf the recruitment system is not regulated, then officials who get promoted would be those whose moral standards could be questioned. The fact of the matter is currently people who could get promotions are those with close connections to the leaders of government institutions,'€ he said.

The Jakarta administration has introduced an open-recruitment system aimed at finding quality human resources among Jakarta'€™s civil servants to fill thousands of middle- to top-level jobs.

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