The central government of Indonesia is trying to accommodate demands for greater autonomy from the regions. As a result, provincial and kabupaten/kota level governments will soon have to cope with political, fiscal and administrative decentralization. Article 8 of Law 22/1999 states that decentralization must be accompanied with the hand-over and transfer of financing, facilities and infrastructure as well as resources in accordance with the authority delegated to a region. SMERU has outlined a four to five year study to monitor the process of decentralization and to test the impact of decentralization on the structure of the government and on the government's ability to deliver services in 12 kabupaten/kota.

From April 2000 to April 2001 SMERU proposes to monitor preparations and expectations in provincial, kabupaten/kota, kecamatan and village level administrations as well as prepare a survey instrument for evaluating decentralization in the future. The study will investigate how the sub-national governments are coping with the processes related to their new functions.

In the second year of the study, starting may 2001, the affect of decentralization on the performance of kabupaten/kota governments in service delivery will be measured. In this study a different methodology will be needed to test performance because it will involve a broad household survey, a census of service delivery points and expert interviews at the local level. As previously stated, SMERU plans to develop the survey instruments for this 2001 study using input and key indicators generated from this year's study.

Twelve kabupaten/kota will be surveyed with two villages covered in each kabupaten. Government, universities, NGOs, print media and village level representatives will be surveyed. Reports will be produced on one kabupaten/kota per month for 12 months with working papers comparing results across kabupaten/kota being published in November 2000 and again in May 2001.