When Salam Fayyad became finance minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in June 2002, the government was struggling to manage expenditures effectively and to deliver the budget to the legislative council on time. Success in addressing those problems required winning acceptance from President Yasser Arafat and other top officials for new work processes, securing other ministries’ compliance with changes in operations, and instituting radical new levels of transparency. Fayyad focused on fixing the system instead of investigating past malfeasance. Under his watch, the finance ministry began engaging with the council’s budget and finance committee, instituting monthly financial reporting, introducing reliable internal control and audit procedures, and adopting internationally recognized transparency measures. Those reforms enhanced the credibility of the authority’s financial management internationally, restarted the flow of external aid and PA revenues withheld by Israel, and helped temporarily end a financial crisis.

Tristan Dreisbach drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, and Jericho in June and July 2019 and on a series of conversations with Salam Fayyad in Princeton, New Jersey, the same year. The case is part of a series on state building in Palestine, 2002–05 and 2007–11. Case published March 2022.

Studi kasus ini juga, Menerapkan Aturan Dan Akuntabilitas: Standar Operasional Prosedur Di Kementerian Keuangan Republik Indonesia, 2006-2007, tersedia dalam Bahasa Indonesia.

In 2006, Indonesian economist Sri Mulyani Indrawati took on a huge and knotty problem: bringing order and efficiency to the Indonesian Ministry of Finance, an organization of 64,000 employees. At the time, many Indonesian citizens viewed the ministry as corrupt and unaccountable, exemplifying the failures of the entire government. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had appointed Mulyani because of her reputation as a tough-minded reformer and a savvy manager. Mulyani ascribed the ministry’s weak and inconsistent handling of taxes, customs and other services to a shortage of clear and consistent procedures for the many tasks employees handled. A key element of her strategy was to simplify and standardize ministry processes in order to improve employee performance and accountability. During the next two years, Mulyani and her team initially focused their efforts on 35 priority services that citizens used heavily, and then they expanded the reforms to include other activities. By 2007, the ministry had developed and implemented nearly 7,000 standard operating procedures. The changes significantly improved public services and earned popular acclaim for both the ministry and the Yudhoyono government. This case shows how a strong leader and her reform team introduced new ways of working to achieve significant gains in service efficiency, quality and fairness.

Rushda Majeed drafted this case study on the basis of interviews conducted in Jakarta, Indonesia, in November and December 2011, and on a 2009 interview of Sri Mulyani Indrawati by Matthew Devlin and Andrew Schalkwyk. Case published April 2012.

Associated Interview(s):  Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Robert Pakpahan