Utilization of Policy Analyst for Better Policy

Agit Kristiana (National Institute of Public Administration)
Erna Irawati (National Institute of Public Administration)

The year 2010 has been marked as an important era in term of bureaucratic reform in Indonesia.  One of the agenda being enforce is in the area of human resource management by promoting professional position (functional position) in the public organization. One of those professional is policy analyst (PA). Public policy in Indonesia has been noticeable with complex, redundant which lead to inefficiency, unclear objectives, great in number, and not intended to serve the public (Dwiyanto, 2015).  For those reasons, PA was established in 2013 to provide better quality of recommendations based on solid evidences (evidence-based policy).

After three years of implementation and recruited around 80 PA which are spread into 19 ministries/agencies/local governments, Center for Policy Analyst Development-NIPA conducted a research to understand and know the present and role of PA in their respective organizations.  Qualitative descriptive research is used to analyze PA’s experience in conducting their tasks, responsibilities, and roles. All ministries/agencies/local governments  are observed and analyzed closely to portray their point of view.  Organization, leadership, and PA’s capacity are chosen as variables to analyze their experiences in dealing with their activities. 
 
Findings show that organization and leader support are lacking while PA’s capacity is present in moderate rate.  The organization has the lowest value 10.75 comparing to leaders’ support 18.19 and PA’s capacity 35.75.  In total, the utilization of PA is 40.87.  Based on those findings some recommendation is presented: NIPA as agency that has responsibilities to develop the PA has to work closely with Ministry of Government Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reform to create innovative ways to place PA in a strategic route of decision making process and ‘force’ decision makers to use and take advantage of PA’s existence.

Powerpoint Presentation