Increasing Trust in Local Government Financial Management and Building Integrity: Efforts Reform in Indonesia

Abstract

In most general terms this article addresses the issue of the trust in the local government area in terms of financial management and integrity. This is important because it relates to the implementation of the obligations and functions of local government to the people by adjusting its financial capacity. Financial capacity of local governments to determine the ability of local governments in carrying out its functions as a public service function, development function and protective function. The low fiscal capacity will lead to negative effects, i.e., low levels of public services and can lead to the decline on public trust in local government performance. In summary, unresponsive governance has been responsible for the continuing decline of trust in government. The challenge now is to make government more trustworthy through improvement of basic services and access, emphasizing equality and fairness in providing services, take the solution to reduce graft and corruption seriously, improve integrity in governance, innovative leadership, pressing a waste of public resources, improve institutional representation, and involve civil society. The final challenge is to increase the trust in the government to make a deal trust between government and citizen, i.e., the integrity pact, and citizen charters. Therefore, this article describes several areas include the following: (1) The political culture and democratization; (2) Reform efforts such as professionalism, commitment and innovation; (3) Trust and integrity in the public service, i.e., accountability, transparency and anti-corruption. We begin by reviewing various examples in the local government for the financial management of local government including continuing efforts to address graft and corruption, red tape, and inefficiencies. In order to achieve effective governance, processes and procedures become an important instrument through an institutional reform. The absence of credible government agency is likely as a result of the high incidence of it. Therefore, institutions, processes and procedures changed for the better and have a standard of performance that can be compared with the services of the private sector.

Keywords: increasing trust, integrity, local government, public service, innovation