There are three main regimes – top-down, bottom-up and quality standards – acknowledged in the contemporary model of public performance management for the delivery of services in the public sector. In 2005, the Indonesian... [ view full abstract ]
There are three main regimes – top-down, bottom-up and quality standards – acknowledged in the contemporary model of public performance management for the delivery of services in the public sector. In 2005, the Indonesian central government launched its Minimum Service Standards (MSS). This set of standards was considered a key aspect of the government’s approach to decentralisation. The definition and indicators included in this model are also considered to comprise the public performance management regime for Indonesian local government. The aim of this paper is thus to understand and observe the model of Indonesian MSS in the context of the international contemporary model of public performance management regimes for service delivery.
As the results of an assessment of various official government documents and interviews with more than 80 interviewees. It is shown that MSS is not fully compatible with any of the four alternative models/regimes of performance management in the public sector. MSS can be seen as being compatible with a system of targets due to its utilisation of ratios and percentages as indicators, but it is difficult to identify MSS as a set of targets due to the absence of any strong enforcement or incentives. It does not seem fully appropriate to classify MSS as being compatible with rank since it does not order local governments based on their performance nor does it involve any ‘naming and shaming’. MSS may be compatible with rank/league if it links other performance management regimes to local government, something which is known as Evaluasi Kinerja Penyelenggaraan Pemerintahan Daerah (EKPPD), but categorising MSS as ranking is not appropriate since there is no direct relation.
Similarly, classifying MSS as being compatible with the idea of intelligence/benchmarking also does not seem fully appropriate. Although MSS is mostly run with self-motivation, there is no empirical evidence that local government has provided and shared background information on MSS nor that it has copied and/or learnt its approach to MSS from the top performers. Finally, MSS does not fully reflect the characteristics of quality standards/assurances, particularly where it does not reflect quality or share information with customers/people.
Finally, thinking of MSS as a new model or regime for performance management in the public sector, particularly in relation to the delivery of services, does not seem appropriate since it reflects certain characteristics of each model of performance management in the public sector, despite the fact that it does not completely fit with any of them. However, the application of MSS as an alternative model/regime for the practice of performance management in the public sector does seem appropriate, particularly in the case of developing countries that have less capacity to deliver services to a maximum level, in addition to in a decentralised system in which a system of targets is difficult to apply.
