PUBLIC SECTOR ACCOUNTING AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

Alita Arifiana Anisa : 2011

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background

The good governance is being a dream or vision of most people, especially in Indonesia for a long time. Although the understandings of good governance are often different each other, but generally each people think that good governance is identical with high quality government. That vision lead people to think of the strategy to achieve it. It’s not easy to get the answer, because as stated before that the understandings of good governance are different related to the context, for examples good governance in corruption eradication means the government that is free from corruption, collusion, and nepotism, the good governance in democracy context means the government gives places for non-governmental actors to participate to create the balance power and function, and from economic point of view good governance can be define as the development management that is solid, full-responsible, based on democracy, efficient, avoid misallocation, miss-investment and corruption both politically and administratively, run the discipline of budgeting and create legal and political framework for its firm’s activities.

In Indonesia the practices of bad governance are being very usual, almost every public sector are identical with bad governance. The worst part of this reality is if the practices of bad governance being very common, everyone will never think even dream about the good governance anymore, because they are usual with the un-efficient system and public procedures and feel that they cannot do anything and do not need to do changes. To avoid that, government need to think about the right strategy to solve that problem and start to realizes the good governance. Public sector is the most strategic way to start to build the practices of good governance, why? because public sectors are place where the government, society, and market mechanism are interrelate each other. This condition may the quality of governance easy to felt by the society. The simplest changes until the most significant changes of governance practices will be felt by the society directly from the public sector services.

This paper will discuss about the implementation of good governance in Indonesia, the ideal good governance and the relation between public sector accounting as one of factors to improve the quality of public sector and good governance itself so that the reader can compare between the implementation and the ideal good governance and choose the best way to do reparation the governance practices, even only to supports the reparation.

B.     Problem Formulations

1.      What are Sector Public Accounting and Good Governance?

2.      How is the implementation of governance in Indonesia at present?

3.      How are the characteristics of Good Governance?

4.      What is the strategy to have better governance?

C.     Purposes

The purposes for discussing the materials are:

1.      To know the meaning of sector public accounting.

2.      To know the meaning of Good Governance.

3.      To know the implementation of governance in Indonesia.

4.      To know the characteristic of good governance.

D.    Benefits

The benefits for learning the materials are:

1.      Increasing the knowledge about good governance, not only about the definition but also the characteristics and implementations, especially in Indonesia.

2.      Increasing the knowledge of governance practice and the strategy to make it better.

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A.    Definition

1.      Sector Public Accounting

For simple accounting can be define as the process of recording financial transactions, analyzing the transactions, and reporting the financial statement to provide information for both internal and external users about the financial condition of the entities, firm, company or others organizations, while public sector is the institution to provide public service for society, such as BUMN, PDAM, PLN, etc. So, the sector public accounting is the accounting implementations or treatments including all the process for the public domain.

2.      Good Governance

There are some definitions of governance, World Bank emphasizes more on the way government manage its economic and social factors to develop the society in defining governance as define governance as “The way state power is used in managing economic and social resources for development of society”, while United Nation Development Program (UNDP) emphasizes more on politic, economic and administrative aspects in managing resources and define governance as “The exercise of political, economic, and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs at all levels”, the meaning of Political Governance is pretend to the policies and strategies formulation’s process. Economics Governance pretends to the decisions making process in economic field, such as economic even distribution, decreasing proverty, increasing society’s life quality and Administrative Governance pretend to how the policies implemented. So what the good governance is? Related to World Bank, the definition of good governance is the development management that is solid, full-responsible, based on democracy, efficient, avoids misallocation, miss-investment and corruption both politically and administratively, run the discipline of budgeting and create legal and political framework for its firm’s activities.

B.     Good Governance

As we have been discuss before that good governance is about developing the solid, responsive, democracy, and efficient management of every activities, such as politic, economic, and administrative. That definition still hard to interpret, so UNDP (United Nation Development Program) gives some characteristics of good governance implementation, there are:

1.      Participation

There is a society involvement in making decision both in direct and non-direct ways (via representation institutions) based on the freedom to deliver aspirations and argumentations (democracy) as efforts to create constructive participation.

2.      Rule of Law

There is the fair implementation of law without considering power, wealth, political positions, etc.

3.      Transparency

There is a freedom to get information related to public interests for everyone needed.

4.      Responsiveness

The governmental institutions have to be responsive (fast to respond) in providing service for public.

5.      Consensus Orientation

The good governance has to public oriented in managing all governmental duties.

6.      Equity

Every person has the same chances to get fairness and prosperities.

7.      Efficiency and Effectiveness

All the public resources are manage effectively and efficient.

8.      Accountability

The government is responsible to the public for every activity done.

9.      Strategic Vision

All the activities done by the government have to based on long term or future vision.

C.     Public Sector Accounting and Good Governance

Such as the author stated before that public sector accounting is the accounting treatment for public domain. In the relation between the characteristics of good governance discuss above, there are three characteristics which are being the public sector accounting’s duties, there are creating transparency by providing the real information related to public sector performance, creating public accountability by providing reports as one of the form of public sector’s responsibility, and value of money (economy, efficiency, and effectiveness).

In realizing big vision of good governance (public prosperity) there are some reform have to do, not only by reforming the institutional format, but also do others reforms, such as:

1.      Institutional reform.

The reform related to the reparation for all government tools both structural and infrastructural.

2.      Public Management Reform

The reform related to the advance reform, especially in district government’s financial management. The reform need to do are:

a.       Budgeting Reform

b.      Accounting Reform

c.       Audit Reform

d.      Financial Management Reform

The purpose of the financial system reform is to create the transparent public money’s management based on value for money concept to have public accountability.

D.    Good Governance Via Public Service

One of the strategies to develop the implementation of good governance in Indonesia is by developing the quality of the public service or by creating the public service that is based on the good governance values. There are some reasons in choosing the public service as the chosen strategy to realize god governance. First, public service is the most perfect place where the government interrelates with the non-government parties, society. The bad or good governance in held public service will be felt directly by the society, the smallest until the most significant changes in managing public service also directly relate with the society and the society will accept the good governance in public service as representation of the “real” good governance, because the public service is the place where society intensively relates with the government.

Second, good governance covers multidimensional aspects that make it hard to measures the success of good governance itself. The hard-measures indicators make monitoring function is hard to hold. The public service can be the easy alternative indicator to know does the governance good or not.

Third, public service involves the interests of all governance unsure, society or public, market mechanism, and government itself. For the society the good public service is very important, because almost whole life of persons are very close with public service, start from they were born (government hospital/puskesmas) until they are die (PUKJ). Market mechanism absolutely will supports the quality changing of public service, because they will get a lot off benefits for their business from the effective and efficient bureaucracy and cost. Last, the persons in government who give the good public service actively will be well known in society, and it will give benefits for the persons in keeping their political positions. So, the good governance in public service will give benefits for each parts of government unsure.

It is not an easy job to have a better public service, but it is also not a really complicated job if we reform it form the core aspect of public services itself. The most core aspect of public service reform is mindset. The present mindset on the actors of public service is placing the bureaucracy actors as the master, not as the servicer. That ideology develop since Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch, the Dutch bureaucracy held the public service not to really provided service for public but t kept their power on the society, they created norm, rules and procedures that controlled the society, and placed the society as threats not as consumers. That kind of service culture have to replace with the better mindset, the core vision of public service to provide the best service for society have to be internalize to all actors related to the implementation of the public service by the activities like employees training, workshop, prepositions, and code of conduct development.

E.     Governance in Indonesia

Good Public service which is represents good governance has some indicators to make sure that the public service can be called as good. The indicators are (Levine, 1990:188) responsiveness, responsibility and accountability. Does the public service in Indonesia good? This table will show you.

Sikap Aparat	Lokasi
	Sumatera Barat		Yogyakarta		Sulawesi Selatan
	N	%	N	%	N	%
Jengkel dan membiarkan	4	2,6	7	3,3	13	7,8
Menampung keluhan	73	48	94	43	50	30,4
Berusaha menyelesaikan	75	49.4	117	53,7	102	61,8
Jumlah	152	100	218	100	165	100

The table above shows us that the three location still not responsive enough to public’s complaint, although more than half cases tried to solve. The other characteristics of good governance are effective and efficient, this table will show you the effectiveness and efficiency of public service in Indonesia compare with the other country.

Countries	Amountof Procedures	Time (Days)	Cost (Dollar AS)
Indonesia	12	151	1.163,31
Malaysia	9	30	965,76
Thailand	8	33	159,63
Vietnam	11	56	136,07
China	12	41	158,14
Filipina	11	50	201,5
India	11	89	264,59
Australia	2	7	600,02

           

The table of amount of procedures, time need to spend, and cost to pay to get business permission in some countries show us that our bureaucracy to get business permission is not effective and efficient compared with the others country. We need most amount of procedures, highest cost and longest time.

CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A.    CONCLUSION

The good governance is being a dream or vision of most people, especially in Indonesia for a long time. The good government itself is the development management that is solid, full-responsible, based on democracy, efficient, avoids misallocation, miss-investment and corruption both politically and administratively, run the discipline of budgeting and create legal and political framework for its firm’s activities. There are some characteristics of good government, such as participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effective and efficient, accountability, and strategic vision.

One of the strategies to develop the implementation of good governance in Indonesia is by developing the quality of the public service or by creating the public service that is based on the good governance values. It is not an easy job to have a better public service, but it is also not a really complicated job if we reform it form the core aspect of public services itself. The most core aspect of public service reform is mindset. The core vision of public service to provide the best service for society have to be internalizes to all actors related to the implementation of the public service by the activities like employees training, workshop, prepositions, and code of conduct development.

B.     Suggestion

Some facts show that the public sector in Indonesia is not responsive, effective and efficient enough, although we know that the good public sector represent the good governance. It would be better for the government to start realizing good governance begin from good public service.  

REFFERENCES

1.      Mardiasmo.2009.Akuntansi Sektor Publik.Yogyakarta:ANDI

2.      Dwiyanto, Agus.2008.Mewujudkan Good Governance Melalaui Pelayanan Publik.Yogyakarta:Gadjah Mada University Press

3.      www.wikipedia.com/akuntansi