SINGAPORE: In a bid to cut down on bureaucratic practices, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo has ordered government officials to stop developing new mobile applications.
This comes as he kickstarts an initiative that aims to integrate systems and data of the approximately 27,000 existing applications operated by various ministries and regional administrations.
At the launch event of INA Digital at the state palace in Jakarta on Monday (May 27), Mr Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, said the state bureaucracy should be looking to streamline and facilitate public services.
“But how can it be easy when ministries, government bodies and regional administrations have more or less 27,000 applications?,” Mr Widodo was quoted as saying by local media as he addressed an audience of ministers and other government officials.
“Every time there’s a new minister, a new director-general, there’s a new application. It’s the same thing with regional administrations. If there’s a change of governor or agency head, there’s a change of application.”
He also said that the integration of public services to the INA Digital platform could help the government economise, and made reference to a 6.2 trillion rupiah (US$388.11 million) budget previously allocated for new online application development, which was scrapped earlier this year.
Of the 27,000 total, the health ministry alone reportedly contributed some 400 applications while an unnamed ministry appeared to have another 4,000 operating under its jurisdiction, according to the Jakarta Post.
According to Minister of State Apparatus Utilisation and Bureaucratic Reform Abdullah Azwar Anas who was also speaking at the event, INA Digital was “not a (new) platform or application, but rather the implementation of an integrated digital public service system”.
It is geared toward providing a single system that allows Indonesians to sign into applications operated by different ministries and government bodies without having to repeatedly put in their national identification numbers.
But users will still have to use different apps to access different public services.
Mr Azwar Anas, quoted in the Jakarta Post, said that by September, INA Digital will have integrated the services of at least 15 ministries and government bodies, including the home ministry, the health ministry, the education, culture, research and technology ministry as well as the social affairs ministry.
According to Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir, quoted in the Jakarta Globe, the INA Digital super application – a mobile or web application that combines multiple services into one platform – is being developed by 400 local digital talents under a project called GovTech Indonesia.
GovTech Indonesia is led by state-owned enterprise Perum Peruri, along with the National Electronic-Based Government System (SPBE) Coordination Team and various ministries and agencies, according to public sector innovation media platform GovInsider.
After trialling in May, it will aim to be available to the public within four months, according to local media platform Kompas.
Jokowi had set INA Digital’s wheels in motion earlier this year, when he allocated nine priority services to be integrated into the platform.
The nine priority services earmarked for INA Digital’s initial stage were: Education, health, social assistance services, police services, digital payment services, a data exchange platform, state apparatus services, population administration services, and a one-stop public services portal.
Speaking on Monday, Mr Azwar Anas said that “the next strategic steps will be to gradually improve on (INA Digital) and to strengthen governance related to coordinating this digital transformation effort,” according to the Jakarta Post.
According to international cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, Indonesia suffered the second highest number of local cybersecurity threats in 2023, second only to Vietnam.
The country’s public service has suffered a number of high-profile attacks, including a reported breach of the General Elections Commission’s (KPU) database in November 2023, less than three months before the February general election, which put voters’ personal data up for sale on black market forums.
