the slides present Indonesia village law challenge to deliver quality public services in rural Indoneisa

1. DELIVERING QUALITY
SERVICES IN RURAL
INDONESIA
Local service delivery and shared
prosperity (September 10, 2014)
Slides prepared by Sentot S. Satria. All data and charts are from various World Bank reports

2. Rapid growth but unequally shared
• Increased prosperity
has been unequally
shared and vulnerability
remains high
• 1/3 of total inequality
due to factors beyond
the control of
individuals: Inequality of
opportunities
• UU Desa can build the
foundation for tomorrow’s
shared prosperity (and
ending poverty in the next
generation)

3. District
Responsibility
(Desentralisasi)
Desa
Responsibility
(UU Desa)
Delivery of quality local services and
infrastructure is key for shared prosperity
Acces to basic
services
Village Scale
Infrastructure
Equal
opportunities
Economies of
agglomeration
SHARED
PROSPERITY
Provision of
basic services
Rural
Infrastructure
interface between local
governments, villages, facilities
and citizens (the frontline)
10% (DAU+DBH) +
local revenue share

4. Decentralization has not delivered better
services, despite dramatic increase in spending
• Functions, money and
national laws & service
standards were ‘dumped’ into
very diverse LGs without
building capacity required to
deliver services
• Quality of services is
persistently low and
geographic disparities large,
HDI remains at the bottom of
countries covered by
surveys.
• The lack of adequate local
infrastructure is generating
economies of ‘congestion’
The “big bang” of decentralization in 2001
provides 200% increase in spending in
terms of share of GDP — LGs spending
grew from 2.7% in 2000 to 7.9 in 2009
Rural districts (Kabupaten) accounting for
over 60% of subnational spending
The same problem could happen
with the Village transfer!

5. Money doesn’t matter without good local
governance and capacity!
Money does not matter much…
…without good local
governance
The same problem could happen
with the Village Fund!

6. Quality of services is persistently low and geographic
disparities large, limiting progress in human development,
particularly in rural areas
• Education
Services: Limited and unequal access to early childhood education;
low quality teachers (an unequally distributed across Indonesia);
Outcomes: 2/3 of 15 year olds at or below lowest learning competency
level in maths, well below comparator countries; and large disparities
• Health
Services: Low availability and quality of health professionals; low (and
unevenly distributed) quality of services (service standards largely
unmet)
Outcomes: High maternal mortality (190 per 100,000) and child
stunting (37%), and large disparities
• Water & sanitation (mainly affecting health outcomes)
Access to piped drinking water has actually declined to 36%, the
lowest in the ASEAN region after Myanmar; about 35% of the
population still practice open defecation; sewage systems exist only in
small parts of 13 cities; poor solid waster management

7. The ‘frontline’ package
• Opportunity: Implementation of new Village Law presents a
great opportunity to improve local service delivery, if good
facilitation, capacity building and oversight is provided as
mandated by the law
• Who? Especially for rural districts with poor education, health,
water & sanitation
• Approach: Focus on solutions under the control of LGs, villages,
facilities and citizens (the frontline) to improve service delivery
Identify development challenges (e.g. maternal health) and key
services/programs to address them
Identify bottlenecks at each level of the service delivery chain
Use the facility as the entry point to develop solutions, working out from
there to identify and align supporting interventions at each level
Focus on & find good local solutions horizontally and vertically

8. The ‘frontline’ package
• Build capacity of districts to support and control facilities and
villages in the delivery of health, education, W&S services
• Support the development of mechanisms to link LG funding for
facilities to results
• Support ‘facilitation’ to raise awareness about key services and
development of ‘complementary’ investments by villages
• Support social accountability instruments to monitor service
delivery (e.g. score cards)
• Introduction of ‘positive’ incentives for villages to make
complementary investments in key services
• Support the alignment of district and village government
investments more generally