KDP

Scott Guggenheim

Ref Batch
D
Focus Area(s)
Ref Batch Number
12
Country of Reform
Interviewers
Rushda Majeed
Name
Scott Guggenheim
Interviewee's Position
LEad Social Specialist, The World Bank
Language
English
Town/City
Jakarta
Country
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Abstract

In this interview, Scott Guggenheim, as a founding party of the Kecamatan Development Program (KDP), details the program’s background and the measures taken to initiate its implementation in Indonesia. He discusses how there was a need for a program in the country that created greater local accountability. Seen through the failure of the Inpres Desa Tertinggal (IDT) development program, Guggenheim explains how the Suharto government became so corrupt and disorganized that no money was going to make its way from the top down to the bottom. Thus, a solution to this problem of corruption would be the distribution of funds directly to the villages in order to eliminate the middlemen who often siphoned off the money. This solution served as the foundation of the Kecamatan Development Program. Guggenheim emphasizes the importance of having an effective and simple disbursement system, to assure that money would be dispersed directly to the communities. Therefore, he states how grateful the designing team was to the National Development Planning Agency (BAPPENAS) who worked out how to make the financing aspect of the project function. The simple design of the KDP that was developed is a facilitative planning system mapped against a disbursement system. There is a direct transfer that does not go through the government, but down to the sub-district. That sub-district allocation gets mapped against village level plans that are prioritized by the villagers. The money is given to the projects in the order that they are ranked in until the money runs out.

He discusses how in 1997, they launched the pilot program of KDP, applying their system to twelve sub-districts. He explains the trepidation in scaling up the program, which was due to the uncertainty as to whether the increase in size would make it vulnerable for corruption. Nevertheless, KDP scaled up to 250 villages in the following year, and Guggenheim talks about the components of the program that stayed constant and that needed to be altered in order for the program to thrive.  One of the components that led to KDP’s success was the microfinance, which allowed for the money to reach the poorest people of the villages. Furthermore, the fact that the KDP was a community run organization, and that each village was responsible for their individual funds, makes it so they felt local ownership over the money.  It was their responsibility if projects failed within their community.  

Profile

Scott Guggenheim, the pioneer of the Kecamatan Development Program, began working for the government of Mexico in their Museum of Anthropology. He then decided to further his education, and returned to graduate school where he studied anthropology. During graduate school, he worked at the World Bank, where he focused on the negative impacts of their big investment projects. Guggenheim also spent a few years in Columbia, where he pursued his post-doctorate degree. Following finishing his education, he went to Somalia on behalf of the World Bank to conduct an environmental assessment for their project of building a dam. While working on this undertaking, he discovered that he was very interested in big projects pertaining to development. Therefore, he desired to continue working with the World Bank on such projects, and indiscriminately applied to five different offices around the world. Indonesia was the first to get back to him, so in 1994 he moved to the country and began working in the social capital-working group of the agency.

Guggenheim added Indonesia to a three-country study; consisting of Indonesia, Burkina Faso, and Bolivia; which looked at social capital and development. As part of this study, they found that projects run by communities are more multifunctional, participatory, and longer lasting than those which are done by development agencies. With this fact, and the knowledge of the struggling Indonesia community based development agencies, an example being the corruption of the Inpres Desa Tertingal grant program, Guggenheim knew that a program that worked directly with the villages would eliminate the money being pocketed by the leaders. Therefore, he spearheaded the creation of the Kecamatan Development Program (KDP) in 1998. This program distributes small grants directly to the villages, not going through intermediate people; thus creating greater accountability within the villages and less corruption.

Herman Haeruman

Ref Batch
D
Focus Area(s)
Ref Batch Number
5
Country of Reform
Interviewers
Rushda Majeed
Name
Herman Haeruman
Interviewee's Position
Former Director
Interviewee's Organization
Bappenas
Language
English
Town/City
Jakarta
Country
Date of Interview
Reform Profile
No
Abstract

In this interview, Herman Haeruman of Indonesia discusses the origins and evolution of the Kecamatan Development Program in Indonesia. The KDP was a joint effort between the World Bank and the Indonesian Ministry of National Development Planning (BAPPENAS) with an overarching goal of poverty alleviation in Indonesia’s poorest and generally rural areas. Haeruman explains how decentralization of power from central to local governments played an important role in the success and inherent value of the KDP, and touches on topics such as the empowerment and autonomy that resulted from the program’s sub-national scale. Haeruman delves into the monetary and executive relationship between the World Bank and BAPPENAS, and describes how an independent monitoring system for money allocations was created to guarantee transparency and prevent corruption in allowing villages to choose how to spend their grant money. Haeruman concludes by discussing the difficulties in scaling up KDP from a local, pilot-based program to a nation-wide agenda, as well as other obstacles faced along the way.

Case Study:  Services for the People, by the People: Indonesia's Program for Community Empowerment, 1998-2006

Profile

Herman Haeruman is a native of Indonesia. Having graduated with a Master of Forestry and Doctor of Forestry from Duke University, he has worked on environmental issues in both the academic and political realms of Indonesia. He was a principle expert in the development of the National Action Plan for Climate Change, and remains a key environmental point-person for the Government of Indonesia. His expertise in the environment had a particular role in implementation of the KDP as an advisor to rural communities on sustainable development and planning. He served as a professor of environmental planning at Universitas Indonesia, was the director of the Graduate School at University Mathla’ul Anwar in Banten, Java, and is currently a professor of forest management at Bogor Agricultural University’s graduate school.

Services for the People, by the People: Indonesia's Program for Community Empowerment, 1998-2006

Author
Rushda Majeed
Focus Area(s)
Core Challenge
Country of Reform
Abstract
When financial crisis and weather-related natural disasters ravaged Indonesia’s economy in 1997, national leaders searched for ways to cushion the impact on poor rural households. A team of public servants within Bappenas, the country’s powerful national development planning agency, suggested an aggressive, nationwide expansion of an experiment in community-driven development. The Kecamatan Development Program (KDP), which worked at the kecamatan, or subdistrict, level, furnished block grants directly to poor communities and empowered villagers to determine how they wanted to use the funds—whether for building roads, bridges, schools, or health clinics. Communities chose, planned, implemented, and maintained projects on their own, supervised by village volunteers, subdistrict committees and verification teams, and specially trained facilitators. Planners at Bappenas worked with the World Bank to modify and scale up the original KDP experiment. The Ministry of Home Affairs, which also participated in the early phases, took over the program two years later. During an eight-year period, the new KDP provided direct benefits for more than half of Indonesia’s 70,000 villages, helping communities move out of poverty in greater proportions than their counterparts in non-KDP areas did.
 
Rushda Majeed drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia, in October 2013. The research benefited from additional interviews conducted by Jonathan Friedman in May and June 2013. This case study is the first in a two-part series; see “Expanding and Diversifying Indonesia’s Program for Community Empowerment, 2007 – 2012.”  Case published February 2014.
 
Associated Interview(s):  Susan Nina Carroll, Herman Haeruman

Expanding and Diversifying Indonesia's Program for Community Empowerment, 2007-2012

Author
Jonathan Friedman
Focus Area(s)
Country of Reform
Abstract
In 2007, Indonesia embarked on a multiyear effort to expand an innovative community-driven development program, first started in 1998, into the largest program of its kind in the world. For nearly a decade, the Kecamatan Development Program had empowered communities to determine how they wanted to use funds for their own development, whether for small infrastructure projects, health and education, or microcredit opportunities. Communities planned, implemented, and maintained projects on their own through village and intervillage committees. The program experienced very low levels of corruption, and in some communities it was the only government program to provide direct benefits that actually reached citizens. It was also successful in raising the incomes of Indonesians in poor parts of the country. From 2007 to 2012, the central government significantly expanded the program and launched pilot projects to extend participation to geographic areas and activities beyond the scope of the original program. Although the scale-up strained management, creating occasional delays and gaps in implementation, the program continued to raise the incomes of the poorest Indonesians. This case study offers several lessons about scaling up community-driven development.
 
Jonathan Friedman drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia in May 2013. The research benefited from additional interviews conducted by Rushda Majeed in October 2013. The case was prepared by ISS in partnership with the World Bank as part of the Bank’s Science of Delivery initiative. This case study is the second in a two-part series; see “Services for the People, by the People:  Indonesia’s Program for Community Empowerment, 1998 – 2006.” Case published February 2014.