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Levels ofGovernment before and after Decentralization
Local Government Organization and Finance: Indonesia 263
Law 22/1999,the responsibility for more than 16,000 service providers (schools,public health centers,and so forth) was reassigned to subnational governments.In addition,for newly decentralized functions,the deconcentrated sectoral offices ofthe national government in the regions (Kanwils) were merged into local government structures.As a consequence,subnational governments absorbed more than 2.4 million national civil servants, including both administrative and functional staffmembers such as teachers and health care workers.As shown in table 7.9,in 2002 subnational governments employed more than three-fourths ofall civil servants.
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As regional governments gained control over the newly assigned authorities,a key challenge was to adjust their organizational structures so that they would be capable ofmanaging their new responsibilities and resources efficiently and effectively.Under decentralization,control over many factors related to regional administration and civil service management resides with the regional governments.Law 22/1999 gives districts and provinces the right to determine the size oftheir civil service and to set up their organizational structure within a framework regulated by the national government:Government Regulation 84/2000 sets limits on the number ofdepartments and other government bodies.The number and structure ofgovernment units varies across regional governments,depending on their size,nature,and location.Typically regional government administrations,headed by mayors (bupati or walikota) at the local level and governors at the provincial level,include a regional secretariat (sekda), a planning agency (bappeda),and a number ofsectoral departments (dinas),includingfinance,education and culture,health,infrastructure, agriculture,livestock,fishery,forestry,plantations,industry,social welfare, labor,and tourism (see figure 7.8).
TABLE 7.9 Distribution ofCivil Service Employment across Levels of Government before and after Decentralization
1999 2002
Level of government Number Percent Number Percent
National 3,519,959 87.9 930,602 23.7 Subnational 485,902 12.1 3,002,164 76.3 Total 4,005,861 100.0 3,932,766 100.0
Source: Rohdewohld 2003.
