In early June UTS:IPPG hosted a group of representatives from the Indonesian State Accountability Revitalization (STAR) program as part of a benchmarking study tour.
STAR aims to support the Indonesian government’s key reform priorities of improving the government’s accountability through stronger capacity of internal auditors and public finance officers particularly at regional levels. Indonesia’s decentralisation process (started in 2000) transferred more than 30 functions and 2 million civil servants from the central to subnational governments. However, the new intergovernmental setting inherited a large administrative and institutional burden, a multitude of public agencies, lack of professional civil servants, uncertified accountants, weak public management systems, graft, and corruption. The latest data of the State Ministry for Administrative Reforms (2008) shows that 50% of Indonesia's 4 million civil servants were not sufficiently qualified. Lack of capacity limits effective public finance management and influences governance by regional governments. In 2010, only 7% of the 516 regional governments received an unqualified (clean without exceptions) audit opinion for their financial statements.
There are several activities in STAR program, all with the objective of strengthening the capacity of local government to implement good governance in public finance management. A key activity is the establishment of a Centre of Excellence in selected regional universities to promote internal audit best practices and cooperation between regional universities in providing public finance management courses for Indonesian local government.
The STAR group met with a range of people during their visit to explore the model and role of a Centre of Excellence; understand cooperation between universities in the provision of courses; and build knowledge improving good governance in public financial management and public service. As well as attending strategic planning and knowledge building workshops with a range of UTS:IPPG staff, the group also met with ANZSOG, The Hon Margaret Reynolds and visited The City of Sydney to learn about their audit and risk processes.
The three day visit was facilitated by UTS:IPPG’s Sophi Bruce, Program Specialist, Leadership. “International knowledge exchange is an important component of public sector learning and capacity building. UTS:IPPG were pleased to be able to prepare a tailored study program for the STAR group to assist their reform priority of developing stronger public governance in Indonesia”.