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Vice President Boediono has stressed the need to punish ministries and state institutions that do not carry out the government’s reform program.

“The vice president has demanded a clear mechanism for penalties for state institutions that fail to conduct reforms,” Yopie Hidayat, a vice presidential spokesman, said on Wednesday.

“The institutions that have complied with the reform program must now make adjustments in their policies and targets.”

According to Yopie, the national bureaucracy reform team, which is overseeing the process, has drawn up guidelines for rewards and punishments based on the results of an evaluation of the reforms undertaken so far.

Among the bodies undertaking reforms since 2007 are the Finance Ministry, Supreme Court, National Development Planning Board (Bappenas), National Police, Armed Forces (TNI) and Supreme Audit Agency (BPK).

Others include the coordinating ministries for the economy, for people’s welfare and for political, legal and security affairs.

This year, the Attorney General’s Office and the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights will begin internal reforms.

Reforms include offering higher salaries to officials to prevent graft and requiring institutions to set up clear short-term goals.

Boediono had underscored the four goals of the reform program — to improve services to the public, prevent institutional corruption, improve the decision-making process and create an efficient and effective bureaucracy — at Wednesday’s meeting with the national bureaucracy reform team, Yopie said.

He said the first five institutions to embark on the program — the Finance Ministry, Supreme Court, BPK, Cabinet Secretariat and State Secretariat — would be evaluated in the coming months.

E.E. Mangindaan, the state minister for administrative reform and head of the national bureaucracy reform team, said the guidelines for the evaluation had already been drawn up.

“We’ve drafted the reward and punishment mechanism to address problems like corruption,” Mangindaan said. “That’s one of the four targets of the reform program.

“Our only difficulty now is finding a mechanism to punish mayors and district heads, because while part of the bureaucracy, they’re directly elected by the people.”

The national bureaucracy reform team is also expected to finish drafting nine criteria to assess the progress of each institution in carrying out reforms.

The evaluation team will be led by Erry Firmansyah, former head of the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX).

Yopie said there was no excuse for any government institution not to have applied for the program by this time.

A new feature of the program requires all institutions to improve their performance first before seeking rewards or performance allowances.

The Finance Ministry, which is undertaking the pilot program, offered its staff higher salaries and bonuses at the start of the program in a bid to encourage better performance.

The tactic seemed to pay off initially, but the recent revelations of institutional corruption within the tax office, which falls under the ministry, has raised questions about its effectiveness.