Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country and the third largest democracy in the world. Since 1999, it has undergone an extraordinary transition to democracy while faced with the multiple challenges of ethnic and religious conflict, secessionist movements, and an economy that has been slow to recover from the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s. The government of Indonesia made a bold move in 1999 by passing two laws that devolved governing power and fiscal autonomy from the central to the district level. This set the country on the road toward the most ambitious decentralization effort ever undertaken, with implementation beginning on January 1, 2001.
In response to this unprecedented initiative, ICMA received funding support from USAID to carry out multi-faceted programs that responded to the challenges stemming from decentralization. The Building Institutions for Good Governance (BIGG) Program in Indonesia had two components: the Local Government Support and Partnership Program (LGSPP) and the Core Management and Budget Skills for Indonesian Local Governments Program. Several ICMA CityLinks partnerships between U.S. cities and Indonesian municipalities occurred concurrently with LGSPP. Training in performance-based budgeting and other financial management skills reached a total of 47 local governments in 2003 and 2004.
In 2005, ICMA was awarded the Local Governance Support Program (LGSP) as a subcontractor to RTI International. LGSP was one of the largest USAID governance programs in the world and covered strengthening the legislative process, engaging citizens in planning and strategic decision making, and improvement of systems for planning and budgeting for better service delivery. ICMA's role in LGSP was to help Indonesian local governments strengthen their finance and budgeting practices.
Local Governance Support Program
Core Management and Budget Skills for Indonesian Local Governments
Local Government Support and Partnership Program
Throughout its projects in Indonesia, ICMA employed its CityLinks program (called Resource Cities at the time of these partnerships). CityLinks brings together the best management practitioners from cities in the United States with officials from developing and transitional local governments. These participants form long-term, sustainable partnerships through which they share resources and technical expertise that translate into practical strategies for improving the lives of local residents. After the partnership teams come together and perform a diagnostic assessment of the city’s current challenges, they develop a work plan to serve as a roadmap for realistic, lasting solutions for these problems.
The Indonesian partnerships focused on issues such as education, water services management, citizen participation, financial management, tourism and historical preservation, and natural resource management. Read more about these partnerships by clicking on the links in the right-hand column.