I, Danielle Lussier, hereby swear that I will never complain again about the bureaucracy at the University of California, Berkeley. I will never utter a negative word about the Sponsored Projects Office, the Committee to Protect Human Subjects, or any of the other systems I have at various times suggested were inefficient, unclear, or unnecessary. As a month trying to navigate Indonesia’s bureaucracy has taught me, UC guidelines are clear, its goals logical, and its offices actually FULFILL the tasks they are meant to perform, even if the processes are not fully transparent. In fact, I think the University of California, Berkeley should take on an advisory role in organizing a reform of the Indonesian bureaucracy. Seriously, this could be an important contribution.
My newfound love and respect for a UC system I have likened in the past to the Soviet bureaucracy is clearly a product of recent lived experience. At John’s encouragement, I am sharing a bit of my own story dealing with Indonesian bureaucracy. For most people who have lived most of their lives in an open and free society and have not subjected themselves to conducting research in a formerly authoritarian country, the entire concept of needing permission to do research is completely alien. But, according to Indonesian law, any individual—citizens as well as foreigners—must receive permission from the state Ministry of Research and Technology in order to conduct research on any topic. I repeat, any topic. Presumably, if you wanted to count the number of stoplights in Java, you would need a series of permits. After about six months of back and forth with this agency, I finally received approval to conduct research in Indonesia. I thought that this is where the headache would end, but the official approval was only the beginning.
The real hassles began once we arrived in Jakarta. Before leaving California, I had downloaded a guide to the Indonesian research bureaucracy that an Australian scholar posted on the internet. If not for this woman’s guide, I would have been completely clueless as to what I had to do once I was in the country in order to comply with all of the laws and regulations relating to my visa (none of which apply to John since he is currently here on a tourist visa).
In the roughly three weeks since we’ve been in Indonesia, I have been to the police headquarters three times (and need to go back once more), the local immigration office three times, the Ministry of Research and Technology twice, the Department of Internal Affairs twice, and once to the office of the governor of Yogyakarta. I am supposed to go to the mayor’s office in Yogyakarta as well, but I decided to try and just mail the letter that requests his permission to conduct research in the city.
I also have to visit all of the governors’ offices in the cities where I’m doing research, starting off another chain of letters that then need to be delivered to mayors and county officials. One would think I was asking for permission to conduct some wild experiment that could interfere with municipal services. But really, all I am doing is requesting access to newspapers, published reports, and permission to have conversations with residents of different regions.
My various trips to all of the above agencies have eaten up something in the range of 20 hours, cost about $175 in official fees, and involved some 30 official-looking pieces of paper that I am sure are of no real importance to anyone and will just end up in a filing cabinet somewhere. Yet, most importantly—at least from my point of view—nothing that has transpired in any of these letters, exchanges, or requests for permission is helping me carry out research. If anything, the process is discouraging me from ever attempting to do research in Indonesia again.
Bureaucracy reform is something that average Indonesians are clamoring for, but the obstacles to it are great. The logic is very simple: the bureaucracy employs countless Indonesians, who spend the better part of their day cataloguing and stamping documents that are of no use to anyone. Papers are logged by hand into registries and put into different colored folders that will never again see the light of day.
As I was commiserating about yet another day of being shuttled from one window to another, John pointed out the irony of the situation. The government sets these laws and regulations that must be upheld and employs tons of civil servants to populate various bureaucracies, but then places the burden of pushing the papers from one bureaucracy to another on me.
With the exception of a couple of forms related to my residency permit, my signature has rarely been required. Usually, Bureaucracy A (like the Ministry of Research and Technology) gives me a letter to give to Bureaucracy B (like the Ministry of Internal Affairs) rather than just mailing the letter themselves. Then, within any given bureaucracy, I have to physically collect some form from one desk, carry it over to another desk to be signed, stamped, and turned in. If a bureaucracy required more than one copy of something, I was always the one to photocopy it (and pay for the copy). You’d think given the size of the bureaucracy that this sort of paper shuffling might be part of their job. But, I guess the government would just fall dead broke if it had to pay for the postage stamps and photocopies that would be necessary if it were going to push its own papers.
The most efficient way to reform the Indonesian bureaucracy would be to do away with countless rules and regulations that create paperwork without providing a real function or service. But then what would you do with the diligent low-level civil servants currently carrying out these tasks? No government wants the unemployment of this sector on its clock.
Maybe if UC Berkeley could conduct bureaucracy reform in Indonesia, it would meet the challenge of an oversupply of bureaucrats by developing a re-training program to deploy human resources to another sector. With all the money Indonesia would save by trimming bureaucracy, maybe it could finally expand meaningful public services, such as building schools and sanitation facilities. I for one think I’d respect the bureaucracy here a lot more if I saw a better provision of public goods where they are truly needed. But, then again, this is why I swear my devotion to the UC Berkeley bureaucracy and why I’d be a miserable politician.
We’re wrapping up our time in Yogya and will head to Surabaya, East Java on Sunday. John and I have both been busy with language study and other work (as well as a bit of sightseeing), but hope to post some more pictures and updates soon.
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