Person:

Woolcock, Michael

Since March 2020, the novelty, intensity, and scale of the COVID-19 pandemic has placed enormous stress on governments, delivery systems, and social order around the world, especially so in countries with modest public health resources, where targeting is especially difficult, and among occupational groups working in close proximity to others. Those overseeing Indonesia’s health care system from mid-2020 onwards faced precisely this vortex of existential challenges, but certain organizations within this system were well placed to deploy an adaptive implementation strategy. KOMPAK was one such organization2; its efforts were not universally successful, but their achievements (e.g., coherently coordinating governance efforts between national, regional, and local levels of government; building effective village information systems) were nonetheless distinctive, consequential and enduring. In this sense, COVID-19 can be understood as a perverse but instructive “natural experiment” in how well public sector organizations respond in the face of unexpected high-stakes, high-uncertainty, low-resource, low-prior-experience crises. We document key insights and implications for public sector administration from KOMPAK’s efforts, not just for Indonesia and other developing countries but for public service delivery systems more generally.