Careful cabinet reform Owen Podger  ;  Professional associate at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra

JAKARTA POST, 02 September 2014

                                                                                                                       

                                                      

Vice president-elect Jusuf Kalla (JK) desires to keep the current structure of the cabinet as it is. I agree. When reform of something is very important the first rule is not to jump in and change it without carefully studying the risks and assigning the responsibilities. In 2000 at the beginning of decentralization, I and some friends working on an Asia Development Bank (ADB) assignment to help decentralization recommended against massive restructuring of local government. For example, we suggested keeping the local agency for primary schools as it was, and calling for incentives for the existing head to improve performance. The local office of the ministry of education which controlled junior and senior high schools would become a local agency, reporting to the regent or mayor rather to the provincial office of the ministry. And the provincial office of the ministry for education would report to the governor and no longer to the ministry. And the first job of the heads of these agencies under their new bosses would be to map all the decisions that were previously made for them, that now they would have to make for themselves or ask the regent to make for them. After the decisions were mapped, we recommended, then the higher levels of government would provide assistance to the lower levels for them to be able to take over making those decisions. We suggested this was already a radical reform. But it would also be clear what had to be done and it was controllable. The government took the advice of others and proceeded to “rebuild the ship while sailing”, combining primary education with high school education in one unit, creating both intense competition and drastic disconnection. After the tsunami, Irwandi Yusuf, the newly elected ex-rebel governor of Aceh wanted to reform the structure of his government, and took the wrong advice. He underwent a long process of selecting new heads of agencies and then suddenly restructured them all. The advantages were very little, the loss of morale and delay in work were damaging. A Joko “Jokowi” Widodo-JK policy of work-work-work was needed but did not happen. I believe that keeping the existing structure of Cabinet is a logical step for reforming the cabinet. It allows a careful and pragmatic approach to reform rather than a radical and theoretical one. So what are the priorities for reform of the cabinet? The first and foremost is insubordination. Soeharto could not tolerate it, but even under Soeharto many ministers suffered serious insubordination. Like in the English comedy Yes Minister, Indonesia’s government is full of people like Sir Humphrey, bent on keeping the status quo and their minister uninformed. So the first priority is to select competent ministers who will implement the Jokowi-JK agenda and handle their senior executives. The second priority is span of control. Cabinet is too big without an intermediate level. Currently the intermediate level would appear to be made up of coordinating ministers, but in fact many ministries claim a spot in the middle, particularly finance for money, the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) for development planning, and home affairs for regional governments. This all needs to be carefully examined to help the President and VP control the scope of their government, and may lead to significant changes in arrangements. To start, coordinating ministers should coordinate issues and coordinate whatever ministries need to be coordinated to resolve issues. Several issues come in as third priority. For 15 years, changes in central government have made it fatter, when with decentralization we would have anticipated dramatic significant downsizing. There is little that drives productivity or eliminates overlapping functions and inconsistent policy. Fat government, overlapping functions and inconsistent policy are the driving force for the cabinet reform movement. But if we start with restructuring Cabinet, everyone works to make the new structure work. This gives a false sense of both security and insecurity. Firstly, people feel insecure because of the upheaval, and feel secure because they feel more change is unlikely. This combination is not helpful for lasting reform. Usually it results in no change dressed in new clothing. If we start with the existing structure and oblige ministers to come up with coordinated plans for eliminating inefficiencies, overlaps and inconsistencies, then we have the right sort of insecurity, that is, the threat of losing position for failure to continually improve performance. And we get feedback from the stakeholders on how to reform. Almost certainly by starting with the current ministerial positions we could end up with an increasingly lean and efficient national government. How we get feedback from stakeholders is very important. Dramatic change needs support from two groups who can make it or break it. The first is all those conservative parties who can say yes but mean no, who can look like they support but are actually intent on undermining. We need them to own the reforms as much as the reformers own them. The second is all the public. The public wants to see what Jokowi-JK are thinking and doing. Making the debate on how Cabinet works and how to improve it is a high priority public concern. If reforms are hard, then they want to know why there are long delays in decision-making. If the new president cannot deliver on a promise because the system doesn’t work, they may forgive the delay as long as they know and can be involved in the process to fix it. A decade ago South Korea went through a period of dramatic reform, including the structure of government. It is only because they took their strategic planning public that they were able to carry it out. Let’s have a Cabinet reform process learning from South Korea to do it even better. ●