Good governance is an important aspect of the implementation of regional autonomy. Experts are of the opinion that decentralization can support good governance because, inter alia, decentralization opens greater opportunity for civil society to participate in the monitoring of government policy.

By referring to several research results and SMERU surveys, this year's last edition of our newsletter critically discusses problems of governance at the local level. One of the issues raised is the provision of services to communities at the local level, given that this issue can become a quality benchmark for regional governance as well as the performance of regional government. For example, in accordance with the objectives of regional autonomy, authority in the area of agriculture extension since 2001 has been delegated to regional governments so that regions have the ability to increase the performance of agriculture extension. Has this, in fact, happened? SMERU's research attempts a more in-depth examination.

Other interesting topics in this edition include the business climate in the post-conflict region of North Maluku as well as several important findings from the SMERU survey results on primary education services in Indonesia. Our guest writers include, Hania Rachma, who provides an incisive analysis of the problems in implementing deconcentration in the decentralization era in Indonesia, while Siti Dahniar from the Institute for Village Reform, an NGO in Deli Serdang, shares her experience in assisting local communities to draft participatory village regulations by involving various elements of the community.a