National Development Planning System
National planning
coordination as the main control and coordinating system has been neglected in
the past decades. In line with decentralization process, the need of
coordinating national and regional plan seems to be underestimated by related
stakeholder. People are overwhelmed by the euphoria of decentralization and regional
autonomy. The fact that human development index report is steadily increasing
but on the other hand is also stagnant in most important area such as
education, suggest that we still have problem in delivering public services. Evaluation
system is also dwindling in methodology and function, the result were never
been used as relevant indicator for future planning.
Supporting laws such as UU17/2003 of Regional Finance and UU 32/2004 of Decentralization are still work in progress and taking shape as framework for integrating national regional development planning process. Current budgeting process in central only took 1/3 from the total state revenue expenditure and the budget ceiling decision is divided between Ministry of Finance and House of Representative. This fact could potentially lead to deviation in planning and budgeting process from inception to execution. BAPPENAS as leading agency in national planning development only has the coordinating capacity up until the annual plan phase. This would hamper the effort in aligning the annual, mid-term and long-term plan since the authority to coordinate is being overshadowed by political intervention in some phase.
The need of
harmonization in national regional development planning is critical. Problem in
vertical alignment must also be in lined with horizontal sector alignment. Government
institution strategic plans between sectors are also have to align and need to
harmonize with participatory planning process from the community. As we are
working in the public domain the concern of absorbing the input from local
community as one of bottom up process is essential.
Planning in the Public Domain
Planning as holistic approach can be translated into particular field today’s focus is on the planning system itself, the context is national development, so what is the best way to elaborate if not discuss on public policy? The object-domain of public policy analysis comprehends all stages of public policymaking, from policy formulation to policy implementation and to policy review. It is obvious that this broad scope requires an equally broad theoretical and methodological basis. Policy analysis clearly needs to be an interdisciplinary field. Friedman in his critical overview of the intellectual history of policy analysis explains that planning system in public domain is dependent on territoriality based system of social relations. The political order systems are influenced by system maintenance, change, and transformation.
Figure 1
elaborates the planning system from knowledge to action. Friedman classified
the planning system into four categories:
1. Planning
as social reform
In this system the
government role is very significant and principal with centralized for people,
top-down, staggered and limited in political aspirations.
2. Planning
as policy analysis
In this system
act as equal to other stakeholders and draft current issues with its supporting
policies. It is decentralized, scientific and liberal in politics.
3. Planning
as social learning
The government
acts as facilitator with the characteristic of learning by doing,
decentralized, bottom up and liberal in politics.
4. Planning
as social mobilization
Planning
depicted as crystallization of political actions derived from the ideology of
communitarian collectivism.
The understanding of planning as social
mobilization is seen as an ideal system since it based on ideology of communitarian
collectivism where is applicable in today Indonesia’s Unitarian
decentralization context.
The
ideal planning system of Indonesia must incorporate positive and normative
theory with social learning as main idea to future innovation. The analogy of
this picture is depicted in the lack of integration of sectoral planning such
as spatial planning, within the context of spatial planning; laws no. 26/2007 represents
three local regulations, laws no. 27/2007 represents four, laws no. 24/2007
represent the disaster risk reduction while laws no. 32/2009 there is
representation on environmental management. All of these laws are related to
RJPD and RPJMD (mid-term and long term regional planning) unfortunately there
is still lack of integration within the national context in the same field.
There is no representation on spatial planning in national development planning
system (SPPN), so the future challenge would be the role of SPPN as main
guidance of integration national regional development planning.Disharmonised in National Regional Development Planning System
The aforementioned could also interpret as
disharmonised in national and subnational development planning system since
there is still lack of integration among sectors vertically and horizontally.
The gap between national and subnationals can be explained as follows:
a.
Disharmonized regulations,
b.
Mismatched cycles of Planning and Budgeting
across levels of government.
c.
Weak linkage between planning-budgeting-output-outcome.
d.
Asymmetric information (where not all
stakeholders have the same amount of information),
e.
Coordination problem occurred horizontally
(between central entities or local entities) and vertically (across the levels
of government).
f.
Inadequate capacities and burden.
Regulations are conflicting causing many things
is not working in system. There are
mismatch in planning and budgeting cycle between national and regional,
participatory planning process most of the time are lagging behind because of
the inconsistency of time flow of the process. The linkage between RKPD to APBD
is often mismatched and there is no mechanism for validation or sanction. More
on the budget, the asymmetrical information flow is causing the inconsistency
in data and information, the problem also fuelled by budget rigidity.
Coordination on vertical and horizontal basis is still lacking and finally
causing the incapacity and irregular budget allocation.
In terms of planning, although the
coordination in national planning and budgeting exist, there should be an
alignment on documents with continuous feedback to support the monitoring
system. On the other hand, based on fact, the current national budgeting system
still in the form of input based not yet performance based.
The fact that timeframe to do planning is
very limited with only half of the subnationals can achieve the targeted
delivery time, has the implication on monitoring and evaluation where at the
same time they have to execute and plan. Planning needs to be structurally measured
and realistic; the human development index currently used as baseline has to be
able to be interpreted in the regional/local context not in ideal
notion/standard. Outcome define output, the central government is responsible
to determine outcome but with some adjustment in local capacity in carrying
decentralization authority.
Best practices in developed country shows
that although the government take over the economic situation is based on
market failure, it is however take the responsibility on improving public
service delivery. BAPPENAS position as planning coordinator is equal to those
in other developing countries in managing national development planning and
budgeting, therefore its position needs to be strengthened and centralized.
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