Juba, Sudan – Indonesia must reposition non-ministerial agencies to eliminate overlap that leads to gross bureaucratic inefficiency, according to experts.

"There are 28 non-ministerial agencies that need to be redefined and repositioned because of their overlapping functions," Sofian Effendi, a public administration expert from Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, said.

"We have the National Commission for Human Rights, the National Commission on Violence against Women, and the National Commission for Child Protection. "They all could be merged into one national commission for human rights," Sofian said.

According to Sofian, overlapping functions have led to inefficient utilization of the state budget.

"Those agencies get 38 percent of the state budget, whereas in other countries the allocation would be no more than 25 percent," he said at the seminar, which was organized by the Administrative Reforms Ministry in Jakarta.

Funds allocated for such agencies were included in the overall budget at the regional level, of which the local administration used 70 percent for administrative purposes, including personnel expenditures as well as for the local operation of agencies, Sofian said.

Another 25 percent was used for sharing project costs, while 5 percent was used to finance infrastructure development, he added.

Former Constitutional Court chief Jimly Asshiddiqie, said that the overlap among non-ministerial agencies had caused excessive inefficiency in both budget and performance, which ran counter to the public's interests.

Jimly, also a member of the presidential advisory council, suggested a moratorium on new agencies until the functions of existing agencies could be evaluated. "During the evaluation we can determine which agencies need to be merged into others," Jimly said. (swd)