Suggestions to Improve Knowledge Transfer in the Government Transition of Power

An efficient and effective knowledge transfer is one of the key to soften the disruptions effect of power transitions (as one of my blog highlights).

1. Create a curriculum of governments administration systems

When I was in the orientation month on becoming a Civil Servant, we have a topic that covers this, which is called SANRI (National Administration System of the Republic of Indonesia). I will not comment on the content of this topic, since it is very much in-adequate with the growing progress of the political structure of Indonesia.

I believe that we need to develop a knowledge transfer place (or what Nonaka said as "Ba") so we could reduce the learning curve of the new leaders, usually in government, they conduct orientation week or month. Then we must design a curricula that reflects to the daily and strategic questions of the leaders, such as

• How do deploy an agenda/a program to the administration systems?
• How to read and interpret regulations? and how to address "different" translation of the regulations?
• How do we navigate the world of politics from legislative, oversight bodies, anti-corruption agency and law enforcement agencies who each has their own agenda that need to be recognized? (worst these agenda is dynamically different depending on the "political climate")

This curricula is must supported by team of experienced educators.

2. Local Governments administration systems must be shielded from political interventions so they become government professional managers

Government stafs are basically managers, they must be professionally develop to conduct their work. We need to develop regulations to forbid them to become political candidates, from the vice head of local government units to the district or provincial secretary. They must agree and abide a regulation that forbid them to enter as candidate as the head of government. Why is this important? It is necessary to distance the professionalism of government managers to the influence of politics.

3. Simplify the administration process

We urgently need to simplify the administration process, I do not mean the streamlining of the government (reduce government employee) but we need to reduce the process and transactions by eliminating or automate non-value adding process. We should focus the human touch to what matters, not on conducting routine things. We have technology for that, focus the human touch on what can not be replaced by technology: direct public services and analysis.

Simplify does not means to take it simple but to make it simple. Make it simple requires effort, deep considerations and analysis which usually not simple. The government system needs what we call in the business, business process re-engineering. With so many things changes, we need to redraw new process (of course with the knowledge of the previous process). Not just one department or sector, but the whole government sectors. Primarily on what strategic guru Porter mention as the support activities: administration & infrastructure (financial, communications, decision making systems), procurement, human resources development and product/service development.

Knowledge Transfers Disruptions in Indonesian Local Government's Transition of Power

Indonesia's experience for widespread democratic elections is relatively new. Recently we have experienced waves of new local leaders from district, province and national leaders.  Although many political experts would cherish this phenomenon as good signs for a democratic country, I has just realize that our government structure is not actually ready and not being prepared for this wave of change. I will discuss this in the perspectives of knowledge management, which concerns with the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge generation, retention, transfer and usage.

The previous government design is to use military style transition of power or widely known as regeneration. The vice head or next in command will be the prime candidate to replace the current head or commander. When we have a new opening of vice head, we will scan the most experienced and knowledgeable candidates based on their current track record. This is make sense, since it will smooth the transition of power, because the knowledge transfers is actually occurs smoothly. The vice head will have time to learn how the administration works if he/she has an agenda or work program.

The direct election concept of democracy, could disrupt the transition of power. With the trends of Indonesians preference, who prefer highly popular figure but somehow inexperience than the experienced incumbents. This is understandable when the previous leaders performance (which include the incumbent) in unsatisfactory. Somehow, our people prefer "buying cat in the bag" (a saying in Indonesian, that you choose to buy a cat just because it sounds better, not because it is good quality cat).

A manager must concerns BOTH leadership and administrations. This is especially true in governments, where the administrations process is overwhelm with regulations and interconnectedness (It was design to share and cloud responsibility if "anything" happens).  A "surprise"-candidates winner will have a long learning-curve to understand how the government administration works even if he has good leaderships.

You have to be able to imagine what do A new leader face when he/she enter his office after winning the elections. They could have a good agenda and programs, but if he/she pushed this agenda, it cannot be done because it is forbidden by a regulation or it is difficult to be executed so the effort is not worth it. The punishment of breaking a regulations is simple you go to jail. Even now, a friend in governments told me that sometimes doing nothing, could also makes you go to jail.

Besides regulations, other questions arise:

• which unit/divisions that I must allocate the budget to?
• if this is a multi-sector agenda, how do I control them, if all unit has the same level of power?
• if this a multi-years effort, how do protect them from yearly budgeting battles between executives and legislators?
• When my government team (which is usually all of them is the previous leaders team) say that it cannot be done, does they really know it cannot be done or they just don't want to work extra miles?
• etc.

The new leader usually can not the answer to this questions right away after election.

I heard from a friend in the Philippines, that to make sure the administration works to serve the leadership, they usually also change the 1st level and 2nd level administration personnel. However logic this style, it will  actually create more disruptions in the transition of power. Group learning usually takes more time and effort than individuals learning. This is a fact that also recognized by my friend when she acknowledges the ineffective the results of the governments.

I am not against "new guy/lady", I believe fresh ideas and fearlessness of unknowledgeable person are powerful resources to make a good change happens. What I want to highlights is that we must address the disruptions of power so that the limited time a leadership has, could be optimized to the betterment of the people. For how to solve this challenge, I have some suggestions that I will write in another blog.