Proceeding Papers: Strategy in Synergizing National Regional Development Planning System

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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