An integrity-driven and service-oriented bureaucracy is a fundamental prerequisite for achieving good governance. Risk management has become an essential instrument for public sector organizations to ensure effective governance and public administration.
The year 2024 marked an important milestone in Indonesia’s bureaucratic reform through the establishment of the President’s Strategic Triangle, comprising three key ministries tasked with driving governance improvement and bureaucratic reform under the Red and White Cabinet. These ministries are the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform (PANRB), the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of National Development Planning (PPN/Bappenas). The Strategic Triangle was established to accelerate the realization of good governance in Indonesia.
Despite these strategic efforts, the Ministry of PANRB recorded the lowest Risk Management Index (MRI) score in 2024, reflecting a decline from its 2022 performance. This situation raises questions about the effectiveness of implementing risk management through the new strategy within the public sector.
This issue motivated Buono Aji Santoso to examine risk management implementation in the public sector, an area that has received considerably less scholarly attention than the private sector. In his master’s thesis for the Master of Accounting Program, Buono selected the Ministry of PANRB as his case study because of its role as the leading institution for bureaucratic reform and as the evaluator of such reforms across Indonesia.
“I hope this research provides insights into the factors influencing the successful implementation of risk management in government institutions,” said Buono, who graduated from the Master of Accounting Program in April 2026.
Through this study, Buono sought to evaluate the risk management implementation strategy at the Ministry of PANRB, examine the challenges encountered in implementing risk management, and formulate improvement strategies to enhance the quality of risk management implementation in the public sector.
The research employed a qualitative approach using a single-case study design. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with nine participants representing the three lines of the Three Lines Model (the first, second, and third lines).
“This approach was chosen to obtain a more objective and comprehensive perspective on risk management implementation,” Buono explained during the 3 Minute Thesis presentation titled Evaluating Risk Management Implementation Strategies in Indonesia’s Public Sector.
The findings reveal that risk management implementation is influenced by external institutional pressures—namely coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures—as well as by the organization’s efforts to maintain legitimacy. Furthermore, the quality of internal implementation plays a crucial role in determining the effectiveness of the strategies adopted.
Buono identified several factors affecting the implementation of risk management in the public sector. Internal factors include the quality of implementation within the organization, encompassing management control systems, organizational structure, human resources, and organizational culture. External factors include regulatory and government policy demands (coercive pressure), the tendency to imitate organizations perceived as successful (mimetic pressure), prevailing professional standards and norms (normative pressure), and the pursuit of organizational legitimacy.
Buono further emphasized that the study demonstrates how institutional pressures and the pursuit of legitimacy shape the implementation of risk management in the public sector. The success of a risk management strategy depends not merely on the existence of regulations and procedures, but on an organization’s ability to align the four elements of strategy implementation proposed by Anthony (2007): management control systems, organizational structure, human resource management, and organizational culture. These four elements must be implemented consistently throughout the organization.
“Only when these four elements are aligned and consistently implemented can a risk management strategy truly be effective,” Buono concluded.
The full 3 Minute Thesis presentation, Evaluating Risk Management Implementation Strategies in Indonesia’s Public Sector, is available at: http://ugm.id/EvaluasiStrategiImplementasiManajemenRisikoSektorPublik.
Reporter: Najwa Anggi Namira
Editor: Kurnia Ekaptiningrum
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