Govt plans minimum service levels

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government has announced it will set minimum public service standards to ensure good governance and improve public welfare in an effort to accelerate the implementation of regional autonomy.

Home Minister M. Ma'ruf said Thursday that the standards would serve as an indicator to measure the government's performance.

"The government is formed or elected to serve the people in return for their taxes, therefore all services given to the public must be measurable," he said after opening a technical meeting to set the minimum service standards.

To implement a 2005 government regulation on minimum service standards, the government has set up a joint team involving the Home Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the State Ministry for Administrative Reforms and the National Development Planning Board.

Regional autonomy requires the central government to provide public services in five fields -- financial and monetary; security and defense; courts; foreign affairs and religious affairs.

Meanwhile, regional administrations are required to provide minimum services in other domestic affairs.

Ma'ruf said that Indonesia had lagged behind its neighboring countries because after 60 years of independence it still had not set service standards.

"The government has already served the public but there have been no nationally-accepted standards to measure whether services have reached the minimum or are below-standard," he said.

State Minister for Administrative Reforms Taufik Effendy concurred and said public services, including the provision of birth certificates, identity cards and other documents for foreign investments and working permits, had to be measurable and meet certain standards.

"The government will set at least 388 minimum service standards in the next two years," he added.

Taufik told government officials and public servants that their main task was to serve rather than govern the people under regional autonomy, saying autonomy was aimed at bringing the state closer to the people.

"While setting minimum standards, we are reforming the administration and the bureaucracy. All public officials and servants should bear in mind that their main task is to satisfy the public.

"Therefore, it is very urgent to stress the importance of reforming the mind-set of the government apparatus," he said.

Taufik said the public had been disappointed by regional autonomy, which placed a strong emphasis on authority instead of public service.

"The central government has decentralized its authority in some sectors to shorten the complicated bureaucracy, or speed up the provision by the government of at least minimum services to the public," he said.

He said minimum service standards were needed to create clean and good governance and were mandated under the Constitution, the 2004 Regional Administration Law and the UN's Millennium Development Goals.