Cultural Advancement Governance Remains On Hold by Funding and Human Resources in Research

Director General of Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Hilmar Farid and Dave Lumenta, an anthropologist of ALMI in KSIxChange#11 Discussion.

Cultural advancement must remain focused on governance, as enshrined in Law Number 5 / 2017. This is because good governance will make it easier for culture to move and build public awareness. Such governance takes form in synergizing various organizations and communities to convene and connect with each other, forming an independent community culture.  

“Who is doing what, the government’s role, private sector’s role, and so on,” said Director General of Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Hilmar Farid, in the KSIxChange#11 Discussion entitled “Linking Research Agenda with Cultural Progress” held by Knowledge Sector Initiative (KSI) on May 7, 2019, at the National Library Building, Jakarta.  

In this governance, the local level must actively formulate what they have out of the 10 advancement objects stipulated by the Law, in order to be managed further. The ten objects are verbal tradition, manuscript, custom and tradition, ritual, traditional knowledge, art, language, folk games, and traditional sports.

The local level is asked to identify their cultural advancement objects. According to Hilmar, this process has involved 320 districts/cities and is not easy to do. Until now, around 190 districts/cities have not identified them.

“When they are requested to identify their cultural riches, they need to do research. Generally speaking, these regions have no funding for research,” he explained.

This is challenging since this cultural riches identification will become the basis for making policies related to knowledge and culture at the local level, which will be funded by, among others, the national level through its General Allocation Fund (DAU).

The next challenge emerging in other regions, especially outside of Java, is the lack of human resources to identify cultural riches. There are many districts that do not have the human resources required to conduct research on cultural riches.

“An example is in Pangkajene, an island in South Sulawesi, or Banggai Laut. These districts practically do not have any resource or manpower who can carry out the task to identify cultural riches,” Hilmar explained. 

These conditions result in around 190 regions that have yet to identify their cultural riches. Meanwhile, from the collected data from 320 districts/cities, Hilmar said the quality of research on cultural riches identification greatly varies. There are detailed ones since it was conducted seriously with sufficient resources, such as the result from Bandung City. Hilmar said the cultural riches identification in Bandung was comprehensive and in-depth.

“Maybe because Ridwan Kamil was the mayor, and he is very concerned with culture,” added Hilmar.

However, a lot of the identification results were too general and lackluster due to various reasons, including limited and lack of human resources able to conduct a research well.

Hilmar stated these limitations have shackled cultural advancement, both from quality and quantity aspects. Therefore, Indonesia has to really formulate its strategy regarding this matter.

Hilmar presented four cultural advancement strategies. The first is a protection to maintain sustainability, by recognizing, recording or stock taking, securing, preserving, saving, and publication. This step is necessary to prevent others from claiming ownership to cultural riches, something that has recently been happening, which can lead to tensions rising.  

The second strategy is development by revitalizing the cultural ecosystem in its various aspects.

“For example, the novel Laskar Pelangi that leveraged tourism significantly, up to 410 per cent,” Hilmar gave an example.

The third and next strategy is utilization, by using advancement objects that heavily rely on research. Lastly, mentoring strategy, which involves empowering human resources in culture, institutions, and increasing the active role of the public.

Endowment Fund for Knowledge and Research

Despite many challenges, efforts to formulate regulations based on research and knowledge are increasingly transparent.

“Law Number 5 / 2017 provides a quite large space for that,” added Hilmar.

It is proven that the process of formulating the collected riches from 320 districts/cities is able to convene and engage a number of parties on culture in their respective region. The point is, Hilmar said, research and knowledge play a crucial role in influencing policy. The same goes in many countries, including the United States of America and India.

However, the cost issue continues to loom. Dave Lumenta, an anthropologist from the Indonesian Young Academy of Science (ALMI), said that years of corruption has made it difficult to build trust in using the State Budget (APBN) funding.

“Now, on every corner, we are surrounded by the audit system, measurement system, and so forth,” he said.

According to him, everything is packaged in numbers, when many things cannot be quantified.

In using APBN, Hilmar said, you have to be detailed, according to plan, and based on cost unit as the one used in physical construction. This process is hard to be applied in cultural related activities, which are dynamic in nature and can grow at any given time, unlike stages for physical project construction, which is relatively predictable, both its process and duration of work.  

Hilmar Farid said that currently, there has been a change in funding cultural activities, namely through the endowment fund policy, which does not come from APBN.

“The source can be from the state, and its application can be more flexible. This means that the manager does not rely on officials within the cultural bureaucratic system. They have to be independent,” explained Hilmar.

According to Hilmar, managing this endowment fund should serve as an opportunity for many parties to develop knowledge and research basis. Studies can serve as inputs and be made as baselines to formulate various state policies.

“We take out energy, financial resources, and so on from bureaucracy,” he said.

Subsequently, bureaucracy will act more as the facilitator.

“Now there is a cultural trust fund. We just discussed it in Bappenas, along with the research endowment fund of IDR 900 billion for this year. We can take 6 per cent from the 900 billion,” he added.

Previously, President Joko Widodo promised to the allocated trust fund of IDR 5 trillion in 2019. According to Hilmar, there is around IDR 300 billion that can be used for research by 2021.

In relation to a research endowment fund, the government has allocated IDR 990 billion of its budget for this purpose. This fund is used to finance more flexible researches. Quoted from Kompas, January 4, 2019, Head of the Special Committee of the National System on Science and Technology Law Draft (RUU Sisnas Iptek) of the House of Representatives, Daryatmo Mardiyanto, said that the research endowment fund will be managed by a specific institution where both individuals and groups can propose a budget.

Daryatmo claims that the submission procedure will not be complicated, and does not depend on the budget cycle. He is certain that this pattern will improve the budgeting system, especially for research implementation.

Hilmar requested ALMI to actively propose for a portion of its fund for research. Its use must be discussed together in details, including by profession and expert associations. He reminded that the role and voice of ALMI and various other associations are vital so that research endowment fund and cultural trust fund are not managed using old ways.

According to the Head of ALMI, Alan Koropitan, the research endowment fund serves as an interesting experiment that needs to be fully utilized.