Administrative reform: Need for consensus, participation of enterprises

What do you expect about the announcement of the APCI 2018 report?

We have many indicators to measure the reform, adding that the index will expect to create transparent indexes for the Prime Minister's goal of building the Government to serve people and businesses. In addition to the "measure" of competitiveness, the satisfaction of people and businesses such as PCI, PAPI.., APCI will create the premise for more substantive assessments with specific figures calculated in money, at the expense of the business operating in the market.

As a result, all activities of state management agencies will be controlled and explained, especially to those directly involved in the implementation of administrative procedures. The APCI 2018 Report is a baseline report and will be used as a basis for the next APCI Report for the following years to compare the costs of adherence to administrative procedures from a business perspective. The government has an overview of the burden of compliance costs of business and hence makes appropriate decisions to further simplify administrative procedures and improve the business investment environment. In addition, the Government will have an additional tool to compare the reform efforts of each locality and ministry and thereby create pressure and competition in reforms between units.

Most importantly, the report stated that the reform of the administrative procedures is not only the state management agencies but also the participation and consent of the enterprises and the people, helping to make the assessment clearer, and more honest.

Through APCI 2018, the business community has directly responded to the reform efforts of eight areas closely related to business. In response to the expectations of the business community, the government has set targets and timelines for review and a 50% reduction in business conditions and specialized inspection procedures. So far, the Ministries have basically submitted a decree on reducing the business conditions required by the Government. The next objective is the participation of the people and the business community, since the reform must be synchronous from many sides, and apart from the reduction of administrative procedures we have to reform the forms of administrative procedures.

These are great expectations, changing our perception of reform, creating a fierce, uniform, and open-minded appreciation by quantifying it. Unfortunately, for the first time, the report did not assess the informal costs that enterprises have to pay when approaching administrative procedures. How to assess the informal cost for "pass" procedures such as "envelopes, greeting cards" to reduce the burden on the business.

So, to achieve these goals, what do we have to do?

At present, the cost of administrative procedures includes both time and money costs, both direct and indirect costs, and formal and informal costs. According to the associations and enterprises, these costs are very high. Enterprises, people when doing administrative procedures also takes a lot of time; they have to travel many times incurring many types of costs. Therefore, the direction of the Prime Minister is that the Advisory Council on administrative procedure reform should help the Prime Minister to direct this drastically.

In the year 2018, the Administrative Reform Advisory Council has continued to operate, with dialogues, meetings, listening to associations, enterprises and sectors to capture information from many directions. Accordingly, we listen to businesses, people rather than just listening from the state agencies together. The Administrative Reform Advisory Council itself also has the participation of many representatives of business associations to create a very objective report. As a result, cutting back on time, formal and informal costs will help businesses operate more smoothly.

When doing these things there will surely be collisions, but we have to accept them, although we do not want to, but have to do. In reform, there can be no opposition, because reform without opposition is bad reform. But we must resolve to abandon the old to replace with progress, to persuade, encourage, and share with each other. In the process of stumbling this is normal, but not for any reason to bind the reform.

Without top-down reform, no one will be reformed because no one wants to leave his or her interests in the service.

If the reform of administrative procedures is good, how will the people and businesses benefit?

If done well, the cost is reduced, both in terms of time and expenses such as informal cost, because we will be able to monitor it. In fact, when inspecting the agencies applying IT and online public services, people do administrative procedures will not know who to give the “envelope”, because nobody knows who solves their procedures. Therefore, if publicly, the informal costs will disappear, the cost of time is also reduced.

Thank you Sir!