Camelia Pasandaran, Jakarta – Public servants who play online games or go shopping during working hours, be warned.
The government is setting up teams to monitor its workers and ensure its "grand design" for bureaucracy reform is adhered to. The program of incentives and supervision, which is nearly complete, is a bid to boost the efficiency of the much-maligned public service.
Vice President Boediono said on Wednesday that the "grand design" covered reform over the next 15 years and there was also a road map for change over the next five years.
He said he hoped the reforms would help counter the negative image presented by the Public Service Integrity Index devised by the Corruption Eradication Commission, or KPK. The index this year was at 5.4 out of 10, down from 6.6 last year. The government had hoped to boost the score to 8 this year.
Last week, Transparency International published its annual Corruption Perception Index, which gave Indonesia a dismal score of 2.8 out of 10. Similarly, the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) says the financial statements from all central government bodies and 60 percent of regional ones received a disclaimer, indicating accounting weaknesses or omissions.
Boediono said the supervisory team would be supported by lower-level teams made up of government and nongovernmental members who would analyze "every single aspect of bureaucracy reform in every institution participating in the program."
Besides monitoring how civil servants perform, the teams will be authorized to recommend higher pay grades for well-performing institutions.
Officials at the Finance Ministry, one of the first to join the bureaucracy reform program, boasted the highest wages among all civil servants during the term of then-minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who implemented sweeping reforms in the tax and customs offices.
However, the arrest of rogue tax official Gayus Tambunan for corruption and the ensuing fallout have marred the ministry's image as the model for bureaucracy reform. E.E. Mangindaan, the state minister for administrative reform and head of the national bureaucracy reform team, said all ministries were expected to complete their reforms by 2014.
He also said that in order to participate, they should address in their proposals the eight targets of organization restructuring, good governance, human resources management, regulation, self-supervision, work accountability, public service and change of officials' mind-set.
"There should be change," Mangindaan said. "We won't only look for performance, such as the absence of a disclaimer from the BPK, but we will demand outcomes. It's the result of the work, of activities, of projects that must have an impact on the people, both directly and indirectly."
Yopie Hidayat, a spokesman for the vice president, said that another target would be to boost Indonesia's ranking in the global index for ease of doing business.
The International Finance Corporation, the investment arm of the World Bank, last year ranked Indonesia 122nd out of 178 countries in the index. The government plans to rise that ranking to at least 75th place following the end of the reform grand design in 2025.
Boediono said that it would take a long time before the planned reforms came to fruition.