The Participation and Civic Engagement Team works to promote poverty reduction and sustainable development by empowering the poor to set their own priorities, control resources and influence the government, market and civil society institutions; and influencing governmental and private institutions to be responsive, inclusive, and accountable. Note No. 73 March 2003 Case Study 4 - Indonesia: Participatory Approaches in Budgeting and Public Expenditure Management Indonesia: Community-Based Monitoring of Early Response Unit (SMERU) with major Social Safety Net Programs1 assistance from AusAid, Asia-Europe Meeting Fund, and USAID. SMERU has five different Background units2 with tasks of, i) building local capacity for rapid assessments of potential `danger' situations Following a dramatic drop in per capita GNP in the field, ii) forming a network of networks of from US$ 1200 in early 1997 to US$ 680 in NGOs for information exchange at all levels, iii) 1998, the Indonesian government began building capacity of communities to do their own implementing social safety net (SSN) programs monitoring, iv) storing and analyzing quantitative targeting the adversely affected - those who and qualitative data, and v) conducting a study on became poor after the crisis and everyone already the impact of provincial trade deregulation. CBM living in poverty. These were aimed at is thus just one of the five units responsible for supplementing their purchasing power through one of the core mandates of SMERU. With an the Special Market Operation (OPK) of authoritarian regime in place for much of the past subsidized rice distribution, preserving access to 30 years, Indonesia did not have a strong critical social services such as education through tradition of civic participation in public life, let student scholarships, and augmenting incomes alone open scrutiny and monitoring of through labor intensive employment government programs. Community Based opportunities. To monitor the implementation of Monitoring under SMERU thus started in these SSN programs and to provide donors and October 1998 by declaring that not much was government with qualitative information about known in the country on how monitoring of the social impacts of the 1997 financial crisis, the World Bank formed the Social Monitoring and 2Crisis Impact and Program Monitoring, Community Based Monitoring, Otonomi Daerah, Data Analysis, and NGO Liaison & Partnership. 1Draws heavily on material posted at www.smeru.or.id ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ This note was prepared by Swarnim Wagle and Parmesh Shah of the Participation and Civic Engagement Group in The World Bank as a case study input on "Participatory Approaches in Budgeting and Public Expenditure Management" for the Action Learning Program on "Participatory approaches at the Macro level". Further details and documents related to this Action Learning Program are available at www.worldbank.org/participation The views expressed in this note are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the World Bank. government programs ought to proceed. Hence `multi layered problem solving approach', an action research project was initiated in three beginning at the level of the kelurahan (village) areas, one urban and two rural. Based on these and kecamatan (district) forums. Complaints on findings, a full-fledged guideline on CBM was to specific programs would first be directed to the be prepared. respective task force, e.g., complaints about cheap rice not reaching the neediest would be Process handled by the OPK task force at the village forum level. Problems that couldn't be solved Three areas that were chosen by SMERU in here would then be forwarded to the Task­Actors September 1998 for pilot monitoring were forum that facilitated open meetings among Bandung City in kelurahan Cibangkong, and community representatives and government Gangga and Sekotong in kabupaten Lombok officials. If problems still remained unresolved Barat. In Bandung, the process was kicked off by even at this `meso' level, they would then be put a team from SMERU introducing the program to forth for resolution at the level of the line the mayor and officials from local government ministries. This multi-layered approach was agencies in the city. After the mayor endorsed the introduced to ensure that the central government idea of monitoring the flow of funds intended for was not inundated with complaints that could be the targeted beneficiaries, SMERU and its civil best verified and taken care of by empowered society partners undertook social mapping, bodies at lower tiers. The forums also have a task identified local stakeholders and invited their force responsible for the community's general representatives to attend an inclusive community development needs, resources, and constraints workshop. SMERU was however only that serves to support bottom-up development facilitating the process. The real hosts were the planning. As these discussion forums are being people from RW 11 ­ one of the sections of institutionalized, SMERU has been working to Kelurahan Cibangkong ­ who in turn invited create a transparent information system that representatives from 12 other RWs in the allows the public to access data on budget Kelurahan. This workshop paved the way for the allocation, criteria for target group identification, formation of a forum of RWs in the region. and disbursement mechanism, so that the task of People attending the workshop democratically community monitoring would be easier. elected community volunteers to lead the Kelurahan forum. SMERU introduced the Results program in Lombok Barat similarly by briefing the chief of the region. Because of difficulties The forums have become suitable effective posed by geography, elaborate participatory venues for local conflict resolution. People have community workshops, as happened in urban brought anomalous cases to the attention of the Bandung, could not be held here, although forum, many of which have been instantly residents of one village each in Gangga and resolved. Sekotong were consulted. A forum of village representatives was created, and as in Bandung, Some examples: results of the participatory processes were presented to a `trans-actors' forum ­ a much In Lombak Barat, people complained that wider `social space' at the kabupaten level - with subsidized rice under the OPK program arrived representatives from the community, regional late. The responsible agency for distribution government, universities, media, NGOs, etc. blamed the late arrival of operational funds for this slow delivery. The community agreed to Within the respective forum, several task forces advance transportation costs to remedy the delay. were formed with representation drawn from all Some also complained that many non-poor parts of the city (all 13 RWs) and all the villages families were included in the list of cheap rice in the rural regions to look at specific aspects of beneficiaries. This was verified, and the forum the SSN programs. It was agreed that monitoring agreed to weed out ineligible beneficiaries by would be done through what was described as a repeating the selection process. Poor families also complained that they had to pay a hefty Rp. one of the national criteria for identifying the 2,500 to transport the rice home. The head of the poor was by looking at whether houses had a dirt village and OPK team agreed to drop the rice not floor, in regions like Lombok Barat, where at the kelurahan office, but down at the dusuns. having a dirt floor was part of the way people lived irrespective of their ownership of wealth, Also in Lombak Barat, students complained that even rich people qualified for SSN programs they were not receiving the full amounts of their while in some other parts where even the poor scholarship money. The forum consulted with lived in elevated houses with wooden floors, they students, parents and the school to find that of the were not be included as targets. Similarly, under allocated amount of Rp. 120,000 per quarter, the the labor-intensive programs in some regions, students had only received Rp. 55,000. It was people were using the money allotted for wages revealed that the school master had been to buy materials like asphalt, cement and sand, siphoning part of the grant to other deserving and contributing labor for free. This showed that students, as only 27 of the 108 poor students communities needing development projects had qualified for these awards. Part of the money was been mis-identified as those needing income also being used to purchase wood for the school. generating opportunities. Also in some places Deemed not a gross mismanagement for personal where targeting of remunerative labor programs gain, the community forum however did request had been done right, it was, however, seen to the school master to get approval from the undermine the tradition of voluntary collective scholarship committee before he took actions that work. were not sanctioned by the school regulation. A Note In North Jakarta, complaints surrounding the manipulation of the names of workers on the SMERU's experience in community monitoring cleaning up of the Kamal Muara canal, as well as is very recent, and it is only complementing concoction of fictitious names of micro-credit numerous other initiatives by the government and recipients, were investigated and verified. This other donors in this field. Because all this was forced the local authority to agree to identifying triggered by the 1998 financial crisis, and both target groups in conjunction with the community SSN programs and their evaluations are both a forums. work in progress, there does not yet exist a rich pool of evidence and experience to draw far- While the forums in the city and the villages reaching conclusions from the successes, or lack were originally created to specifically discuss thereof, of these initiatives. But initial signs are SSN programs, this space has already been promising, and all actors seem to realize that broadened by the people to discuss wider community-based activities are there to continue, community issues such as land disputes, local even after the SSN programs cease to be public services, local sanitary conditions, etc. A implemented, justifying multiple interventions at country with weak democratic traditions, the institutionalizing these nascent efforts presently. contributions these forums are making in Indonesia by allowing people to come together and debate their rights and discuss about their legitimate entitlements has added immense value to local social infrastructure, which means that even after the SSN programs are withdrawn, these are likely to be sustained as active self- governed community organizations. Monitoring has highlighted subtle but serious flaws in the targeting and design of SSN programs such as their failure to take into account local conditions. It was found that when "Social Development Notes" are published informally by the Social Development Family in the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network of the World Bank. For additional copies, contact Social Development Publications, World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, MSN MC5-507, Washington, DC 20433, USA, Fax: 202-522-3247, E-mail: sdpublications@worldbank.org. Printed on Recycled Paper