Before the amendments to the 1945 Constitution, the president was obligated to work in compliance with the State Policy Guidelines (GBHN), established by the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR), as the reference for all government programs during the five-year tenure.
Now, after the amendments, this is no longer the case. Whoever is elected as president will have ample space to implement their own work programs for the next five years.
Despite the existence of a Long-Term National Development Plan (RPJPN) 2005-2025 and the Master Plan for Acceleration on Economic Development (MP3EI) 2011-25, the binding power of these two strategic documents are not comparable to the old GBHN, as the former plans are always subject to change depending on the compromises made between the new president and the new parliament.
A system infrastructure serving as a common platform for most government agencies would demand consistent practices and reduce the possibility of short-termist policies.
According to research from McKinsey Center for Government, the ratio of government debt to GDP for OECD countries now exceeds 100 percent. Meanwhile, public trust in government is eroding. Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2014 shows that the general public in Indonesia trust business leaders more than government officials.
Not only must the government of Indonesia do more with less budget but they must do so in highly visible ways if they are to regain the faith of the public.
Fortunately, the ubiquity of internet and information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, governments can deliver performance in a more efficient manner. Some governments are starting to shift their e-government platforms from simply administering services through ICT, to regularly engaging their citizens.
The United Nations Public Administration Network reports show that Indonesia’s e-government performance ranked 109th out of 122 countries in 2012. Among 21 APEC member countries and among 25 countries with populations of above 50 million, Indonesia was at 15th and 13th respectively.
These numbers show that beefing up its e-government performance should be a priority of the new government. The government could start by providing online public services regularly needed by the citizens.
One could look to France for best practices. As part of its e-government transformation starting in 2009, the French government set its policy objectives to reduce the complexity of dealing with the government by identifying 50 life events — such as getting married, buying a house, or starting a business — during which citizens have to interact with government. It then sought to simplify these interactions.
Indonesia attempted a similar operation digitalizing its ID system. The aim was to integrate nationwide population databases but unfortunately the project turned into a fiasco, with losses estimated at over Rp 2.1 trillion ($183.4 million), according to the Academic Forum in IT (FAIT).
While the central government has some established statistics against which their performance is measured, local governments have a wider array of measures, that could be made accessible to the public through the web.
As an example, Moscow is beginning to publish a dashboard of around 50 key performance indicators relating to the city’s health, education, safety, and transportation.
In Jakarta, rather than displaying photos of the city governor on bridges, the city needs more visual dashboards reporting on how many TransJakarta buses are in operation, the progression rate of MRT development, the number of households successfully relocated from slum areas, and others.
One area in which the Indonesian government has performed relatively well is in the e-procurement system. The Government Procurement Agency (LKPP) has recorded budget savings of around 11 percent per year for the past 5 years, thanks to the national e-proc system. The government could use Korea as a world class benchmark in the e-proc system.
The issue here is not the lack of policies and regulation. Most of the problems are in the implementation.
Regulations such as the Presidential Decree No.6/2001 on Telematics, Law No.11/2008 on Electronic Information and Transaction, Law no. 14/2008 on Public Information, Law no. 25/2009 on Public Service, Presidential Decree No.3/2003, and assorted Ministerial Decrees, have been helpful regarding e-government initiatives.
One way to improve e-government initiatives is to restructure the unit in charge of the e-government to be equivalent to echelon I, reporting directly to a minister. Currently, e-government is administered by an echelon III structure, the Directorate of e-Government, under the Directorate General for Informatics Applications in the Ministry of Information and Communication. Alternatively, the unit could also be embedded in the President’s Work Unit for Supervision and Control of Development (UKP4) to enhance its leverage.
The performance of the government should be accessible to the public at large. With the absence of a binding GBHN, the public should not provide the government with a blank check. The late Nurcholish Madjid, a leading Muslim scholar, said that we should not entrust the fate of a nation into the hands of one or two leaders, but instead entrust it to a reliable and transparent system.
Improving on the e-government system should be a strategic priority of the new government. Not only will it enhance the quality of public services, but it is an investment in itself — an ICT-enabled government accountability system.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Asnan Furinto
Quelle/Source: The Jakarta Globe, 12.04.2014
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