Jakarta, IO – In 2015, the late Professor Agus Dwiyanto of Gajah Mada University, who also headed the State Administrative Agency (LAN) from 2012 to 2015, wrote on the first page of his book Contextual Bureaucratic Reform: Returning to the Right Path that bureaucratic reform programs tend to be caught in formalism and excessive documentation rather than substantive and cultural transformation.
One of the indicators to measure the quality of bureaucratic reform is the government effectiveness index, which reflects the quality of public services, the quality of the state civil apparatus or civil service officers (ASN) and its independence, the quality of policy formulation and the credibility of the government’s commitment.
In the 2021 World Bank global index, the effectiveness of the Indonesian Government was ranked 62nd, with a score of 0.38 in 2021, between a scale of -2.5 as the lowest and 2.5 as the highest.
Its neighboring Southeast Asian country, Singapore, is acknowledged as the country with the finest bureaucracy in the world. Fiji, as one of the countries learning from Indonesia, has a better ranking, 52nd. It has been 25 years since the Reform took place, but based on the bureaucratic reform specifically regulated in Presidential Regulation 81/2010, the bureaucratic effectiveness index is still far from satisfactory.
The target of 0.5 set by the Government in 2014 was not achieved. During the two terms of Joko Widodo’s administration, the index seemed to have sunk lower, and the Government seemed to prefer self-made instruments to measure its success.
Instead of strengthening bureaucratic reform, the executive and legislature have their hands full discussing the revision of ASN Law 5/2014, such as the substance of the ASN Commission (KASN), the status of honorarium-based nonASN officers and the central and regional ASN dichotomy.
Various exotic policies, such as bureaucracy simplification, talent management and recruitment of ASN candidates, have not been able to thoroughly and contextually answer the demands for an effective bureaucracy. The bureaucratic reform agenda has become increasingly disoriented.