A Model of Policy Formulation for Village Development Programs in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Email: syahrani.smd62@gmail.com Abstract: The objectives of this study were to describe and analyze the process of policy formulation for village development programs in East Kalimantan and to propose a model for the policy formulation process. The study was carried out using a qualitative method. The data were collected through deep interviews, documentation and field observations using interactive analysis model of Miles and Huberman. The study findings show that the policy formulation process for village development programs does not include an analysis on selecting priority problems and programs based on the criteria as stated in the Regulation of Minister of Home Affairs Number 66 Year 2007. Therefore, the proposed programs are greatly influenced by the motives, interests and powers of the existing actors/stakeholders. Consequently, the proposed village development programs do not meet the needs of the community members.


Introduction
"Bottom-up" Planning Approach is a development planning approach which is able to involve all levels of stakeholders. This approach is more participial and accommodating because it is able to accommodate aspirations and needs of the society from the lowest level. Planning process which requires community to involve is conducted through a public consultation or Development Planning Meeting (Musrenbang). One of the public consultations applied by the government of Indonesia in formulating national and local development plans is musrenbang. It is an annual meeting, which is typically conducted in several stages through a bottomup planning mechanism. The stages are as follow: Pre-Village Development Planning Meeting (pramusrenbangdes) and Village Development Planning Musrenbangdes is a development planning meeting at village level. This meeting is preceded with a pre musrenbangdes which is attended by all neighborhood heads and community group leaders together with all community members to identify and to examine the problems and the needs of the village which are then proposed to musrenbangdes. All of the proposals will be discussed in musrenbangdes at village level.
In practice, the process of policy formulation for village development programs is far beyond the expectation. The formulation mechanism of village development programs does not run in accordance with the Regulation of Minister of Home Affairs (Permendagri) Number 66 Year 2007. The aspirations and opinions of the community members at the lower level have been distorted and castrated. This is because the problems and needs are mostly determined by the powerful actors who have their own interests; as the result, the democracy and freedom to talk and give opinions do not belong to powerless people. Therefore, the activity of formulating village programs (Musrenbangdes) is only a routine activity which does not touch the nature of real program formulation. This is stated in the Report of Local Development Planning Board (Bappeda) of Kutai Kartanegara Regency entitled: Participial Planning in Kutai Kartanegara Regency" stating that: "The planning mechanism tends to be ritual, a likely formal routine and does not touch its substance and it has lack of its natural intention" (Bappeda, 2011). The same problem is also found in Central Java as it is stated by Sukadi (2005), a Coordinator of OC 5 Rembang City, Central Java Province working for National Program for Community Empowerment (PNPM) Mandiri in urban area that.
Musrenbangdes becomes a merely annual ritual without giving any implication or it is merely gabug or musrpro (Javanese language which means doing useless things). In a certain occasion, Musrenbangdes is only giving a "halal (legal)" label to particular figures that have a loud voice in proposing programs for their own advantages. It is indeed unfortunate that the learning tool which is accompanied by good regulations in terms of its process and its product does not give any impact on the changes of both attitudes and behaviors. However, in order to make Musrenbangdes able to provide lessons and learning to the people and their leaders, the misconception about Musrenbangdes must and has to be corrected (Sukadi, 2005).
In the perspective of public policy analysts, to produce qualified village development programs, it is necessary to do policy analysis on the proposed programs. Weimer and Vining (1998) stated that "policy analysis is a process of evaluating some alternative policies using relevant criteria in order to find the best alternatives for policy actions". Then, Stuart (2001) said that "Public policy analysis can be defined as determining which of various alternative public or governmental policies will most achieve a given set of goals in light of the relations between the policies and the goals".
In this view, there are some steps or methods of policy analysis. Dunn (1994) (1) states that "in this step the input shall be derived through the identification of village problems and potential resources" and Article 12 Paragraph (2) states that in the stage of problem conversion, "the process shall be done through problem classification, determination of problem rank, analysis on problem solution actions and determination of action rank".
Furthermore, according to Permendagri No 66 Year 2007, in determining the problem rank, certain criteria should be followed. Each criterion is assigned a score and the problem which has the highest score will be prioritized to be proposed and solved. These activities refer to problem formulation activities based on the perspective of public policy analysis. Subarsono (2008) stated that "problem formulation is an activity to determine, understand and analyze the sources or the conditions which underlie the problems".
After a number of priority problems have been collected, the next step is finding alternative solutions to the problems, which is called forecasting. Howlett and Ramesh (1995) stated that: "After a public problem has made its way to the policy agenda, various options have been proposed to resolve it and the government has made some choices among those options; what remains is putting the decision into practice".
After forecasting various alternative actions to resolve the problems, the next step is giving recommendation, that is, by offering the best (ultimate) alternative solutions to the problems. In the Permendagri, this is termed as the determination of action ranks. According to Permendagri No 66 Year 2007, in determining the ranks of actions, certain criteria should be followed and each criterion is assigned a score. The action which has the highest score will be proposed for further recommendation.
In practice, the policy formulation process for village development programs does not touch the substance of the real formulation of village programs as what is The purpose of the study was formulated, researcher wanted to contribute to the improvements in the formulation process of rural development programs and to find out a model that will be proposed and implemented in the village administration in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.

Methodology
This method was conducted by: a) Getting into the field b) When getting into the field the researcher brought all sorts of research tools such as notebook, interview guideline, Stationaries, tape recorder, camera and others. The researcher had to be able to adjust to the habits, customs, traditions and the culture c) Choosing and handling the informant d) The informant chosen were the official head of the Community Empowerment Board (Bapemas), the village chiefs, the head of the Institute for Community Empowerment (LPM), heads and members of the Village Consultative Body (BPD) and the Chairman of neighborhoods (Ketua RT) technical team from the district and others e) Keeping a record of data/information from the field When conducting in the field researcher found and took note of data by using various techniques. The techniques were:

In-Depth Interview
Researcher inquired questions based on the interview guideline directly to the key informants and other informants. The researcher took notes for the answers and comments in the form of summarized sentence, keywords and major points. Furthermore, the researcher reviewed all the data within a day in order to avoid losing the data. Researcher also used a tape recorder to conduct the interview. In conducting the interview, the researcher repeated the interview to different informants in different time in order to acquire objective and accurate result based on the triangulation technique used by the researcher.

Documentation
The process of documentation by the researcher was done to complete primary data not found in the field and as the secondary data in helping the data analysis

Passive Participant Observation
The Researcher conducted a participant observation passively in the field, conducting interviews and documenting study and took notes of every related phenomena.

Triangulation was Conducted in Addition of these three Techniques Above
The data were analyzed using interactive models ( Fig. 1) as proposed by Miles and Huberman (2013), There are three concurrent flows of activity: (1) data condensation, (2) data display and (3) conclusion drawing/verification.

Data Condensation
After collecting and studying the data, the researcher identified the smallest unit in the data which have a purpose related to the focus of research. The data were reduced and summarized by selecting the major points only, removing the irrelevant data and focused on the important points. Then, the researcher, organized the data based on certain concept, theme and category which would give sharper results of the observation and helped the researcher to look up the data when it is necessary.
Data condensation refers to the process of selecting, focusing, simplifying, abstracting and/or transforming the data that appear in the full corpus (body) of written-up field notes, interview transcripts, documents and other empirical materials (Miles and Huberman, 2013).

Display Data
Parts of the data which have similarities were chosen and given labels. The researcher categorized the data based on the major points and made into a matrix, therefore it made the researcher easier to relate patterns of each datum. Every category available was patterned and given labels. All those processes were delivered in the form of narrative text, charts and maps which made the temporary conclusion possible.

Fig. 1. Interactive model
A display is an organized, compressed assembly of information that allows conclusion drawing and action (Miles and Huberman, 2013).

Conclusion Drawing and Verification
The researcher elaborated parts of the data in order to reveal the arrangement and therefore made clearer interpretation. Data interpretation was conducted in order to interpret deeper and wider meaning of the research, by taking notes of data organization, patterns, elaboration, possible configurations, cause-result relationship and propositions. The elaboration of the research was conducted by critically evaluating the results with relevant theories and accurate information gained from the field. All these activities were part of making the conclusion and verifying the data.
The third stream of analysis activity is conclusion drawing and verification. From the start of data collection, researcher interprets what things mean by noting patterns, explanations, causal flows and propositions. The researcher holds these conclusions lightly, maintaining openness and skepticism, but the conclusions are still there, vague at first, then increasingly explicit and grounded. "Final" conclusions may not appear until data collection is over, depending on the size of the corpus of field notes; the coding, storage and retrieval methods used (Miles and Huberman, 2013).

Policy
Formulation Process for Village Development Programs The process of policy formulation for village development programs is conducted in two phases: Pre-Musrenbangdes and Musrenbangdes.

Pre-Musrenbangdes
Pre musrenbangdes is a meeting to prepare village programs in the scope of sub-division of village (dusun). The process of program formulation is preceded by a discussion at dusun level.
The participants of pre-musrenbangdes analyze the conditions of their own regions related to problems and potencial resources at dusun and the actions of how to resolve the problems as well as to accommodate aspirations and concerns of the people, especially the poor people and marginal groups. The Head of Tanjung Agung Village stated: "The programs are determined through pre-musrenbang to explore the ideas of the community (neighborhoods and leaders) which are then proposed in musrenbangdes". Pre-musrenbangdes will produce a list of village problems and priority needs of the village community as well as the potentials possessed by the village. The result of the consensus obtained in pre-musrenbang is stated in the official report (BAP) of the Pre-musrenbangdes.

Musrenbanngdes
After pre-musrenbangdes activities are completed, it is followed by musrenbangdes activities. Musrenbangdes is a meeting conducted to formulate village programs in the scope of village. Its activities should follow Annex 1 of Permendagri No 66 Year 2007 on mechanism of Village Development Planning, which is conducted in three stages: Input, process and output.

Input Stage
In this stage, the result of pre-musrenbang in the form of a list of village problems, community priority needs and village of potential resources become the inputs in musrenbangdes. All of the proposals from some dusuns are compiled and discussed in musrenbangdes. In this stage the participants of the meeting consist of the following elements: Village Government; BPD (Village Consultative Body); Village LPM (Institute for Community Empowerment); Customary Institutions; Element of Neighborhood Organizations and Dusun (Representatives representing this element are equipped with Assignment Letters and Official Report on the result of the local development planning meeting); Representatives of Social organizations such as Farmer Group organization, gardener groups, small business community, speed boat groups, Ojek Group, cooperatives, traditional arts, ethnic groups, sport clubs, market trader groups and other social organizations; Youth Organizations; Private Sectors, such as entrepreneurs, investors and traders; Women Organizations; Community, religious and customary leaders. At input stage, the participants explain and clarify all proposals that have been determined in the pre-musrenbangdes.

Process Stage
After all program proposals from some dusuns is completed and presented by the Head of LPM in the committee meeting, then the participants of musrenbangdes are grouped into three groups based on their fields, namely economy, human resource and infrastructure. In the committee meeting, priority activities are formulated, validated and recapitulated. Secretary of Loh Sumber Village said: "After the presentation, the participants are assigned in groups to formulate the rank of priority scale. They discuss with giving opinions, arguments and sharing experience".
According to Permendagri No 66 Year 2007 on the mechanism of Village Development Planning, the participants of Musrenbangdes should determine the rank of the problems and the rank of actions to solve the problems. Indeed, the participants only give explanations and clarifications about the problems and the actions taken to solve them. The Head of Loh Ipuh Village stated: "In musrenbangdes we just clarify all of the proposals by asking 5W plus 1H (what, why, when, where, who and how)". The secretary of Loh Sumber Village said: "In musrenbangdes, scoring is not applied to determine the priority scale; it gives more emphasis on equality because when scoring is applied it is possible that most activity will center only in one neighborhood unit and this will result in a jealousy in other neighborhood units".
The same way is also applied in determining the priority of the program proposals. The participants also do not assign scores to priority programs based on the criteria stated in Permendagri No 66 Year 2007.
In determining priority programs, the participants apply a persuasive bargaining process with giving opinions, arguments and sharing experience based on their observations and experiences. The reason why they do not apply scoring is that this way usually creates a long debate and takes a long time. The Secretary of Sie Mariam Village said: "If the Permendagri is followed, it will take a long time because in assigning scores to the priority programs also needs a long debate". Another reason is for equity. The Head of Manunggal Jaya Village stated: "There is a need for equity among us by considering the condition in the field whether it is urgent or not". It was also found in the field that the ruling actors who have power and certain interests, especially the authoritarian rulers are able to give influence on determining priority programs. The Head of Bukit Makmur Jaya Village stated: Authoritarian village chiefs may insist on proposing their programs to be accommodated.
Finally, the results of group discussion (committee meeting) are presented in the plenary meeting II. The activities in this meeting include: (a) the presentation of the results of committee meeting, (b) responses from the participants of the meeting, (c) validation of the results of the meeting.

Output Stage
In the output stage, process of discussion is to determine the program allocations based on the period of implementation and the sources of fund, whether the programs will be allocated using the following sources of fund: Village Fund Allocation (VFA), National Budget (APBN), Cooperate Social Responsibility (CSR) and National Program for Community Empowerment (PNPM) Mandiri. In this situation, all proposals are expected to be accommodated. If certain programs do not have fund allocation, they will be proposed in the following year or will be allocated in another source of fund.

Existing Model of Policy Formulation Process for Village Development Programs
Based on the explanation above, the existing model of policy formulation for village development programs can be illustrated in Fig. 2. The consensus reached in pre-musrenbangdes in the form of a list of problems, priority needs and village potency is presented in Musrenbangdes. In musrenbangdes, the results of the agreement are discussed by the participants from various elements at village level. However, in practice, the representatives of dusun only explain and clarify the proposed problems and needs of the dusun to other participants. According to Permendagri No 66 Year 2007, in this process stage, the participants should filter the problems and the proposed programs according to certain criteria. However, this procedure is not followed. The participants only give argumentation, opinions and suggestions and end up with a consensus or agreement in the discussion.
The criteria used to determine priority problems according to Permendagri No 66 Year 2007 are: The problems should be the concern of all people, very serious problems, frequently happen, potential to be resolved and whether the problems hinder the increase of revenue or not (Permendagri No 66 Year 2007 on Village Development Programs).
The criteria used to determine priority programs are: The proposals should meet the needs of all people, they support the increase of people's incomes and they are supported by available potency (Permendagri No 66 Year 2007 on Village Development Programs).
In the perspective of public policy analysts, to produce qualified village development programs, "it is necessary to do policy analysis through problem formulation, prediction or forecasting and recommendation" (Indiahono, 2009;Bardach, 1977;Dunn, 1994;Patton and Sawicki, 1987). Therefore, a list of problems and priority programs as the output of the pre-musrenbangdes will be discussed in musrenbangdes. The problems in this list are filtered by giving scores based on the criteria as stated in Permendagri No 66 Year 2007 to obtain a number of priority problems. The result of the analysis is a number of priority problems based on the highest score. According to the perspective of public policy analysts, this activity is called problem formulation. Subarsono (2008) said that "formulating problems is a method to collect information about existing problematic conditions".
After a number of priority problems have been formulated, the next stage is finding their alternative solutions. In other words, forecasting is needed to find alternative actions for the problem solutions. Dunn (1994) said that "forecasting is a procedure to make factual information about future social situations based on the existing information on policy problems". The next step is giving recommendation on the best actions of problem solution. Dunn (1994;Nugroho, 2009), stated the number of alternative solutions need to be assessed based on certain criteria in order to have the best solutions for further recommendation. Subarsono (2008) said: "Policy recommendation is a process to select various alternative policies based on criteria that have been determined". Therefore, in the perspective of public policy analysts, analyzing problems and priority programs needs filtering based on certain criteria to obtain quality programs so that preventing the motives, interests and power of the ruling actors who may affect the process of program formulation. Grindle (Nawawi, 2009) said that "power, interest and strategy of actors that are involved in formulating policies need to be considered because all of them may affect the accomplishment of the implementation". Harmon (Prasetyo, 2010) said: "The transaction process performed by actors is extremely influenced by their orientations and interests. Usually the ruling actors are more dominant in the process of formulation". This is line with Robbins (1995) who stated: "The decision maker is likely let him or her own interests influence decision making". Therefore, "actors usually associate with the policy makers, interact and interrelate in every policy/program formulation process. Actors play important roles in policy implementation" (Fischer and Miller, 2006;Sutton, 1999). These conditions make the village development programs in Indonesia unable to fulfill the needs of the community in resolving their village problems.
As for the reasons why the participants do not follow the Permendagri No 66 Year 2007 is that the criteria stated in the Permendagri ignore the issue of equality and take a long time.
The fact that equality is ignored is when one neighborhood has a lot of problems it will receive a larger amount of fund support compared to the one with only a few problems. Criteria used in the permendagri give more emphasis on the fulfillment of needs to overcome the problems rather than an emphasis on equity. Therefore, criteria of equity need to be included in the Permendagri. Bardach (1977;Patton and Sawicki, 1987) said that equity is a program that can promote equality and fairness in the community. This is in line with Sidney (Fischer and Miller, 2006) stating that the main factors which determine how far the alternative policies can be adopted to be policies are as follows: "The elimination of alternative policies will be determined by a number of basic substantial parameters. If in a policy making process for an alternative policy creates a lot of political criticisms, this alternative policy deserves to be eliminated because it has lack of political supports".
Another reason is that the musrenbangdes is attended by too many people so in order to reach a consensus for priority problems and programs, it takes a long time and needs a long debate. Gross (Ekowati, 2009) said that "In reaching a consensus it is greatly influenced by the number of actors who are participating in a policy decision making". This condition makes the activities in musrenbangdes take a long time so that it is difficult to take a consensus.

Recommended Model of Policy Formulation for Village Development Programs
Based on the explanation above, it is found out that there is a gap in formulating village development programs between what is happening in the field and what is expected. It can be illustrated in Table 1.
From three steps of policy formulation process for village development program (Table 1): Input, process and output, a gap was found in the Process Stage. The actors/representatives, who determined the problems and priority programs, did not filter based on specific criteria resulting in village development programs with lessproficient result. This condition caused the gaps between what really happened on field and what was expected to. Therefore, the model recommended in the Process Stage, there should be a filtering process based on certain criteria for all the problems in order to rank the degree of problem, thus from there the priority of the problem would be determined in order to produce alternative solutions for the problem. After the solutions were decided, a filtering process based on criteria would be needed to gain the priority programs which would be recommended, therefore highly-proficient village programs would be achieved. Then, the recommended model of policy formulation process for village development programs is proposed as Fig. 3.  Analyzing village problems and potential Analyzing village problems and potential resources based on resources based on the conditions of regions.
the conditions of regions. Process In solving the problems: To propose a list of the To filter the problems and programs based on certain criteria: solutions and priority programs. Without filtering 1. To rank the problems based on certain criteria based on certain criteria.
2. To forecast alternative solutions 3. To give recommendation based on the criteria. Output Low quality village development programs Quality village development programs This model is particularly relevant to rural communities in Indonesia who uphold democracy and freedom. This model can create a democracy and the freedom of citizens to express their opinions and aspirations freely and promote citizen participation in development activities. This model uses Bottom-up planning approach which is able to involve all levels of stakeholders.
The use of the recommended model would be able to produce a high-quality village development program significantly, because the formulation process of the village development program is analyzed through problem formulation, forecasting and recommendation and then filtered based on certain criteria so that it can prevent motives, interests and the power of the ruling actor who may affect the process of program formulation. This model can contribute to public policies implemented and policy makers from government institutions to be implemented.

Suggestions
The criteria of equity should be included in Permendagri No 66 Year 2007, meaning that the programs should promote equality and fairness.
The number of musrenbangdes participants should be limited to prevent a long debate in determining priority problems and programs.