Hafid Abbas, Jakarta Post | Sat, 05/14/2011 8:00 AM |
In early 2004, in Indiana, the United States, local people were surprised one day by the appearance of a woman named Jessica on a TV talk show.
The reason was, Jessica is an extraordinary overweight woman who is only able to walk a few meters a day because her legs cannot sustain her weight.
Seemingly, this analogy illustrates the posture of Indonesian bureaucratic structures that exist today. Due to the extraordinary number and types of bureaucratic positions, existing bureaucracy here and there overlaps both within each ministry or in between different ministries.
Overlapping areas are likely to be enlarged by the presence of nearly a hundred ad hoc state task forces, commissions, councils and agencies.
Similarly, the deputy minister position at some ministries likely overlaps with the role of the secretary general.
Also, the presence of special staffers for each minister with no clear tasks has made bureaucracy more inefficient and to some degree has triggered the internal politicization of bureaucracy.
As a result, the existing bureaucratic structure is overweight and unable to quickly respond to the real problems in society.
During the second period of the United Indonesia Cabinet under President SBY, one of his top priorities is to reform the bureaucracy.
The Finance Ministry, several other ministries, the military and the police have made internal reforms and have begun to receive more reasonable remuneration compared to other ministries that have not undertaken efforts to reform.
The reason for prioritizing remuneration for all officials at the Finance Ministry is likely to liberate them from the temptations of corruption, but the intention is different from the reality.
Disclosure of some banking scandals and cases of the “tax mafia” of Gayus H. Tambunan has broken down the myth that a larger salary will contribute to zero corruption. That reason appears to remain a distant utopia.
The core problem indeed is not remuneration, but the vagueness of concepts and firm direction to reorganize the bureaucracy. It is like throwing salt into the open sea.
We have traffic jams, so an Anti-Traffic Task Force is established. We have a cold lava flood, so an Anti-Cold Lava Flood task force is established, etc. Such symptomatic approaches makes bureaucracy increasingly overweight, easily prone to contradiction and eventually unable to move more flexibly in addressing and solving the existing challenges of development.
Borrowing Gandhi’s view, the government indeed is a tool to serve the people, promoting and empowering individuals and communities who have been marginalized (swaraj).
The spirit of bureaucracy is to serve the weak and the poor with the mission of empowerment and enlightenment. Therefore, the more the lives of the weak improve, the less demanding the bureaucratic role becomes.
Although it is impossible to achieve a condition where the bureaucracy is not needed at all, its authority should be gradually minimized if the community has been moving forward.
If the concept is to streamline the bureaucratic structure while enriching primary functions, the North Sumatra experience can serve as a simple example.
In 2008, this provincial government removed 237 structural positions considered not functional and created additional financial burdens for the region (Kompas, Oct. 14, 2008).
If all provinces did the same, 7,821 unnecessary bureaucratic positions would be eliminated. Can we imagine the amount of state budget funds that could be saved for other purposes, such as poverty reduction, for example.
Learning from these breakthroughs, each ministry and all government institutions at the central and local levels should immediately make internal or external matching exercises to rationalize or reorganize bureaucratic units.
The Law and Human Rights Ministry, for example, has 11 main central units, including the Directorate General of Corrections, which has 4,784 structural positions. We can imagine how many positions are available at this ministry.
For example, the ministry has three agencies such as the Research and Development of Human Rights Agency, the Human Resource Development Agency and the National Law Development Agency (BPHN) that can all be merged into one or two agencies. Similarly, six other Directorate Generals have many similar basic tasks and functions that can be combined.
In terms of preparing and drafting legislation, BPHN and the Directorate General of Legislation can be made more synergetic.
Similarly, the Directorate General of Human Rights has similar core duties with the Agency of Research and Development on policy studies and technical standardization on human rights, so it is quite rational if the two institutions were merged.
The Directorate General of Immigration and Directorate General of Corrections can also cooperate in the management of immigration detention so that internal efficiencies and professional interaction among officials can be made more useful.
A similar approach can be made for integration between and among different ministries; for example, between the State Secretary and Cabinet Secretary, or the National Education Ministry and Religious Affairs Ministry in terms of managing national education.
Great inefficiencies also occur at the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry. The politicization of the ministry and overweight bureaucratic structures result in great inefficiency and neglect of the principles of competence and professionalism in its management.
As a result, it is not surprising that in 2009, the total profit of all 158 state-owned companies, including Pertamina, was only around US$7 billion. Compare this with only one company in Malaysia, Petronas, that was able to post a $20 billion profit (vivanews.com March 25, 2010).
All these alarming realities should touch the fiber of our hearts and minds to immediately rationalize our bureaucracy for a better Indonesia.
Therefore, under these circumstances, a moratorium on remuneration at all ministries and state institutions should be imposed. If bureaucratic reforms are only partially carried out, it will likely only create more complicated problems.
If increased remuneration is only for certain agencies, this can lead to jealousy and bureaucratic instability that could disrupt or endanger the entire administration of the second term of the United Indonesia Cabinet.
The writer, a professor at Jakarta State University, is former Director General for Human Rights Protection and a UNESCO consultant for the Asia-Pacific Region.
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