Jakarta, (Antara) - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) is now seeking an appropriate form of civil servant rationing, political communications expert Lely Arrianie said.
"The Jokowi-Jusuf Kalla (JK) government is now seeking a form of civil servant rationing which will not disadvantage those who have become civil servants," Lely Arrianie, of the University of Bengkulu, said here on Monday.
Lely who is also chief of Jayabaya University's Communications Post-Graduate Program, said it is not easy for the government to change the bureaucracy from a human resource to technology-based bureaucracy. The previous government also faced the same difficulties.
However, Lely said the government's efforts to create new order among civil servants has slowly begun to show results.
Minister of State Apparatuses and Administrative Reform Asman Abnur has previously said that the government was acting to increase the effectiveness in the number of civil servants.
One of the actions taken by the government allows the rationing program to run automatically. The system assures that two retiring civil servants will be replaced with only one new civil servant.
So, the bureaucracy will automatically streamline itself since the number of civil servants recruited is small and are recruited based on the immediate needs and their skills.
The government is also putting in place the distribution of civil servants, so they do not accumulate in large cities, while border regions remain short of employees.
In line with the plan to create an electronic-based government, Minister Asman said the government is now drafting training programs for civil servants.
The programs are focused on information technology capacity building for civil servants.
The minister said the implementation of e-government could not be avoided, as the development of information and telecommunications technology is having a significant impact on the running of the government.
Therefore, the bureaucracy sector needs competent human resources to support these programs.
He also said he would empower all training institutions, including the State Administrative Institute (LAN), to train civil servants in the technology sector.
Regarding meetings at hotels by civil servants, Asman Abnur said meetings would provide a stimulus for business establishments and would have a positive impact on the economy.
"On the issue of policy meetings being held at hotels, in fact, many government agencies now meet at hotels. Meetings provides an extraordinary stimulus to the hotels," Asman said at a media gathering in Bandung, West Java, late last month.(*)
