Understanding the current problems in functional assignment

II.4 Understanding the current problems in functional assignment

Key informants point to the government’s inconsistency in implementing regional autonomy. Although Law No. 322004 and Government Regulation No. 382007 have regulated functional assignment between the government and regions, in practice many laws initiated by sectoral ministries do not refer to the Law 322004. Policy actors in sectoral ministries still have a centralistic mindset in relation to regional governments. Unsurprisingly, the Minister of National Education then issued a regulation apparently to withdraw some decentralized functions and reas sign them to governors as the government’s representatives. The MONE’s policy has hurt the implementation of regional autonomy. One explanation of why such various forms of inconsistency continuously occur is the desire of decision makers and actors in ministries to retain, grow and control their budgets. The desire to continue to work with large budgets, in the face of supposedly deep decentralization, encourages central government decision makers in sectoral ministries to find ways of justifying direct or deconcentrated expenditures over which they can yield control. They are reluctant to allocate sectoral budgets to regions through a special allocation fund DAK mechanism because their access to control the use of the budgets is restricted, compared to direct or deconcentrated expenditures. Ultimately, tehre are not many justifications for these mechansims to justify the large budgets and the expenditures are justified by paralell lawsregulations or simply by ignoring existing regulations and plunging ahead with centrally crafted programming. Facilitating the above tendencies of the central government is a political economy of national actors that encourages collusion and diminishes checks and balances. Deals are struck between the ministries and the national legislature DPR that are not transparent, and this is aided by a budget nomenclature that does not revela the infringements on lower level functions. The resulting national budgets thus allow, or favour, the continuation or growth of deconcentrated structures and financing mechanisms, that prompt regional key informants to refer to the phenomenon of “dekon-dekonan”. This phenomenon reminds stakeholders of the pre- decentralization regional offices Kanwil. Provincial governments also complain about the existence of sectoral ministries’ centers implementing units in regions. Both provincial and district stakeholders feel that central functions in regions, where legitimate, should be as much as possible co-administered to provinces or districts. The imporper design and use of deconcentration and co-administration is more difficult to explain. The poor construction may be due to a lack of a shared understanding of what the constitution calls for, and regional autonomydecentralization principles. The inappropriate reliance on these mechansims, particularly deconcentration, suggests also that the mechansims is used to retain control of funds that are in fact spent on activities that should be undertaken by the regional governments. In moving forward, the government will need to rectify the framing and use of the two mechanisms, with reference to international practices. If this can be done, ministries have a greater opportunity to use deconcentration and co-administration principles in ways that complement the regional autonomy framework, resulting in consistent, efficient, effective and accountable regional government. Sectoral ministries will be able to assign a greater amount of de-concentration to governors as central representatives, not only for coordination and synchronization but also for other central government functions they think to be more efficient and effective if the functions are delegated to governors. In terms of co-administration, ministries may apply this mechanism to provincial andor district governments to perform certain functions they think to be more efficient and effective if the functions are delegated to regions. The same can also be done by provincial governments in managing their functions. They may appropriately apply the co-administration mechanism to districts and villages to perform certain provincial functions.

II.5 Change in Distribution of Governmental Functions and Criteria for Functional Assignment