National Seminar on Functional Position of Policy Analyst, Researchers and Lecturers 

Universitas Indonesia  

29 September 2016

This one day national seminar – a collaboration between the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucracy Reform (KemenPANRB), the University of Indonesia Centre for Study of Governance and Administrative Reform (UI-CSGAR) and the Knowledge Sector Initiative (KSI) – provides an opportunity for DFAT to highlight Australia’s contribution to improving the use of knowledge and evidence in policy making through the discussion of functional position of policy analyst, researchers and lecturers at university. The event will take place at the University of Indonesia Campus and will feature Secretary to KemenPANRB, Dwi Wahyu Atmaji; Deputy Minister MenPANRB for Human Resource Apparatus, Setiawan Wangsaatmaja; Directorate General for Human Resources at the Ministry of Research Technology and Higher Education, Prof. Dr. Ali Ghufron Mukti; Indonesian Academy of Science, Prof. Siti Zuhro and other speakers from universities and other institutions in a seminar that will highlight the challenges, obstacles and opportunities for three functional positions. DFAT is not expected to give any official remarks at the event.

 

Background/Purpose

• As a continuation from previous fiscal year (FY), KSI has been intended to facilitate a platform for knowledge exchange and contestation between knowledge producers, intermediary as well as and knowledge users to improve the processes of public policy making by presenting qualified existing evidences particularly on knowledge management/repository. 
• The Government of Indonesia, through the Ministry of State Administrative and Bureaucracy Reform (KemenPAN-RB), issued in 2014 a decree establishing a new functional position of policy analyst (Jabatan Fungsional Analis Kebijakan). The main tasks of a policy analyst according are to identify policy problems, forecast, provide policy recommendations, and monitor and evaluate policies. LAN has been appointed as the lead agency to supervise and provide training to policy analysts. 
• Policy analysts play an intermediary role between researchers (at universities, Balitbang or policy research institutes) and public decision makers, translating data and research into policies. The position is relevant in terms of the opportunities it creates for introducing processes and systems that can help government officials to demand, communicate, synthesise, and analyse knowledge and evidence at different stages of the policy cycle. One expected outcome is the greater use of evidence in policy making. 
• It is a key position for the translation of knowledge to policy. With the right competencies, policy analyst can minimise the barriers to a healthy knowledge sector as identified by KSI, including the lack of availability of and access to data, low quality of policy analysis, the lack of interaction between producers and users of knowledge in the policy making process, and low capacity for demanding and using evidence on the part of policy makers.
• An example is the low quality of legislative products as the subnational level, where thousands of local regulations (Perda) have been annulled by the Ministry of Home Affairs, most often because they contradict higher regulations or a just plain badly formulated. LAN has introduced this new position to improve the quality of such policy documents.
• Meanwhile, there some regulations have been supported the functional jobs of researchers and lecturers at universities including: Law No. 12/2012 on Higher Education, Law No. 14/2005 on teachers and lecturers, PermenPANRB No. 17/2013 on the Functional Lecturer and credit numbers, Minister Regulation of Education and Culture of Indonesia No. 92/ 2014 on Technical Guidelines on Assessment of Credit Lecturer. As KSI partners’ study findings identified, there are some problems faced in the development of human resources in higher education, among others, namely: unclear mechanism of the appointment of lecturers and researchers, lack of career paths for researchers, lack of open recruitment mechanism for lecturers and researchers, and merit-based performance assessment. 
• Furthermore, as indicated by prof. Bunyamin, Director of Human Resource for Researchers and Lecturers, Kemenristek-dikti  that unlike researchers at Indonesian Academy of Science (LIPI), the civil servant researchers at universities have no clear career paths.    
• Therefore, KSI has planned to support the KASN, Kemenristek-Dikti, Bappenas, KemenPANRB, BKN, LAN, TI-RBN, and relevant stakeholders to interact. On 29 September 2016, KSI, KemenPANRB and UICSGAR will organise the national seminar on functional position of policy analyst, researchers, and lecturers.