JP/Seto Wardhana

In 1997, Indonesia passed a long-term plan that lasted less than one year. In 1998, the fiscal crisis and the downfall of Soeharto made the plan both useless and contrary to the demands of the Reform Era.

Despite such outstanding proof that the type of long-term planning was most likely useless, the 2004 Law on planning called for long-term planning every 20 years for a 20-year period. And the first period would be from 2005 to 2025. This plan was endorsed in 2006, and required further planning within sectors.

The bureaucratic reform “grand design” was prepared in 2010 and was for the period of 2005 until 2025. Magic! A plan in 2010 for the period starting in 2005! The dates of this plan had nothing to do with either urgency or reasonable planning horizons for implementing reforms.

The 2010 bureaucratic reform grand design starts well. It says (my translation) “bureaucratic reform requires rearranging the processes of the bureaucracy from top to bottom, making breakthroughs though innovation […] realistic and genuine […] out of the box thinking, changing the paradigm, with business not as usual [...]” These are good words.

The plan was divided into five-year slices. The plan from 2010 to 2014 was to create a clean government free from corruption, improve public services and improve capacity and accountability.

Since we have not gotten there in 2019, was that a failure to implement the plan, or was there something wrong with the plan?

Well, it was a failure of both from 2010 to 2014, but after that the plan was largely ignored, for good reason.

The approach, like almost all of Indonesia’s long-term and medium-term planning, is deterministic: It goes like this (my translation): “improvements in policy will push the creation of institutions according to needs, effective management of government and human resources, and a system of supervision and accountability that will create government with high integrity. The implementation of these things will drive a change in mind-set and culture-set in each bureaucrat towards a culture that is more productive and accountable.”

So did we get improvements in policy that would push the creation of institutions according to needs? Or did our new policies create effective management? Do we have policies for supervision and accountability that create a government with high integrity? Must we wait for these things to change the mind-set and culture-set? No. this plan totally fails to understand the problems of introducing reforms to change the bureaucracy.

The aim for 2015-2019 in the grand design was to do what had not been completed from 2010 to 2014. This had three serious problems.

First, it already assumes a failure of implementation in the first five years.

Second, it assumes that not only is there nothing wrong with the plan but that the president-for the 2014-2019 period, Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, had no need to change the plan, because reform will happen like clock-work.

Third, and most importantly, it failed to recognize that introducing reforms is a battle, and needs strategies and tactics to fight resistance and bad guys.

And the aim of the following five years of the grand design, that is from 2020-2024, was to do what had not been done in the first term of Jokowi.

And then in the final year (2025) Indonesia will have achieved “quality government” without ever having to change the plan. And of course no need to prepare any long term vision until after 2024.

Jokowi ignored the grand design and has his own strategy. For his first five years he emphasized a change in the mentality of his bureaucracy. The grand design placed this as an outcome, he made it a foundation stone on which to build reform. It has been a battle but we can see success in most entities and great success in a few.

For his second term, he shows even less interest or commitment to the 2010 grand design and its determinist approach. He is demanding disruptive change. He does not expect ministries to voluntarily restructure to emphasize competency and flexibility, he orders them and threatens those who do not
get productive results. He relates reforming government directly to productivity and therefore to the budget.

By eliminating lower echelon levels, work at lower levels is organized by creating teams of professionals, arranged in the budget papers, so that organization is immediately related to the workload. No longer will some offices he overworked and others have no work. Jokowi’s disruption can do what the Grand Design could never do, that is, demand greater performance, the driver of improvement.

So can we expect another grand design for bureaucratic reform? Unlikely and I hope not. But we can expect the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry to have its own plan for reform to provide services to ministers to enable them introduce the reforms Jokowi demands.

And we can expect a new ministerial reform plan, but not separate from each minister’s strategic planning.

____________________

Professional associate, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra.

Popular

Indonesia plans for where people sleep, not where they live their day

Developmental state ambition: Reading Prabowo’s economic direction

Prabowo’s frequent foreign trips raise priority concerns