Building Digital Bureaucracy
The transformation leap into the Indonesian Digital Bureaucracy has to be forced through the development of SuperApps, an integrated digital platform that offers various kinds of services in one application.
With no way of avoiding and delaying it, Indonesia has to leap into a digitally based government. The progress of digitalization in the private and public sectors has been very fast and linked with the demand of the Industrial Revolution 4.0.
This has given birth to Governance 4.0, which is a bureaucracy characterized by speed and convergence in all affairs, covering public administration, development and public service.
On the other hand, the characteristics of Indonesian bureaucracy today are basically still at the level of Governance 1.0, which is marked by high political orientation, overlapping interinstitutional programs and activities, as well as various manual and fragmented business processes. The current technological convergence offers Indonesia a big opportunity to leap into Governance 4.0. Is this likely to occur?
Data and system fragmentation
There are several basic issues on the way to the digital bureaucracy. First, the absence of standards on data structures and metadata in ministries/institutions/regional administrations (K/L/pemda) or even in each unit/division of the government agencies. This has created different data structures for the same type of data, which means they cannot serve as a single data basis for the various processes of decision-making, policy-making and preparations for inter-K/L/pemda programs/development activities.
The integration of digital programs of development, administration and public service requires the Single Data of Indonesia (SDI), along with security system regulations and management so that the data is properly protected and not easily hacked.
The problem of present-day data is that the existing data in various government application systems often give rise to redundancy, have no common references, lack accuracy and follow diverse standards. It causes confusion to each K/L/pemda in policy-making and development program planning, such as the program for poverty relief and the program for strengthening micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), over the choice of correct and accurate data.
Also read:
> Modernization of Bureaucracy for National Development
The varied data currently makes it difficult to set up an integrated system of digital bureaucracy between various government agencies. Besides, the pattern of outsourcing, now widespread in the creation of different applications and their maintenance, generates the potential for data sovereignty and security threats because of vulnerability to leakage by third parties, while there is certainty high dependence on the third parties.
The second issue is technological utilization, which remains fragmented. A lot of applications are produced by K/L/pemda to serve different governance purposes. This condition, of course, leads to duplications and difficulty in integrating the provision of public services. For the system of personnel alone, for instance, there are now around 27,000 applications and personnel databases spread over 2,700 government-owned server rooms.
Apart from technological fragmentation, the other problem is the low sustainability of applications because their development does not follow the proper standards of technology and management, so the applications become digital trash and vulnerable to hacking. The root cause is the absence of standards on business management systems and processes, so each K/L/pemda builds its technological systems based on its own understanding and needs.
On the other side, many regional administrations’ internal business management processes (like personnel, planning, assets, public service) are still carried out manually on the basis of physical documents and are rigid in nature.
SuperApps for Indonesian bureaucracy
The transformation leap into the Indonesian Digital Bureaucracy has to be forced through the development of SuperApps, an integrated digital platform that offers various kinds of services in one application.
We imagine various forms of data integration, business processes and technologies for different internal service needs of the government, as well as public services for the public. Is it possible for the process of transformation from the manual, traditional and partial bureaucracy to the digitally based integrated bureaucracy be executed rapidly?
It can certainly be realized. First, it’s due to the high commitment of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Vice President Ma’ruf Amin as already stated on various occasions. Second, technology is a means of enforcing a change and at the same time, an enabler in the process of transformation itself.
Also read:
> Bureaucratic Supervision 2021
> Bureaucratic Reform Report Card
Third, the development of diverse sorts of digital services in the private sector (online shopping) has aroused public awareness and given proof of the ease and efficiency derived from technology. The mindset that should be uplifted is of course the digital and dynamic one, instead of the analog approach, moving step by step an in a linear fashion.
With the SuperApps of Indonesian bureaucracy, different government businesses and service processes naturally have to be reordered without delay. The restructuring of internal and interinstitutional business processes must be done through the reregulation and deregulation of various rules to adjust the needs of data integration and the SuperApps-based application systems.
Heryunanto
For the acceleration of Indonesian bureaucracy’s SuperApps development, the National Data Center should be immediately built to house the Single Data of Indonesia, which is the construction of infrastructure for information and communication technology-sharing and preparation of machine-learning technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to be used for big data analytics as the bases for decision and development policy-making.
With Indonesian bureaucracy’s SuperApps, diverse kinds of public services can be provided online, with people in general shopping online through various applications that can be downloaded and used any time by means of cell phones.
The weakness of bureaucracy in speeding up the change to digital bureaucracy is due to the many regulations and mandates, as well as the mental blocks in each institution.
While it will be more efficient and effective, online services with SuperApps will prevent potential corruption committed through face-to-face meetings and the loss or manipulation of various manual physical data. Different public service applications can be added in phases and continuously to the microservices and multiplatform technology based SuperApps.
On the other side, the tasks in bureaucracy will also be even more flexibly executed wherever and whenever needed with the guarantee of quality based on the integrated and standardized system. This is very highly likely to occur because at present, the millennial (Y, Z) generation already constitutes 31 percent of the population, and in 2024 it will reach 42 percent, and they are very familiar and accustomed to interacting with technology.
The weakness of bureaucracy in speeding up the change to digital bureaucracy is due to the many regulations and mandates, as well as the mental blocks in each institution. A South Korean diplomat once assigned to Jakarta to consult on the development of an e-government in Indonesia explained the importance of a Digital Government Law to eliminate various regulatory constraints in the transformation to digital bureaucracy.
Also read:
> Battle of Interests in the Bureaucracy
> Building an Agile Bureaucracy
This law is a kind of omnibus law on digital governance for the integration of different sectorial rules related to the diverse business processes and institutional mandates. Besides, there is now also some ambiguity over what executing institution has the authority to implement the transformation into digital bureaucracy. Some ministries (like the Communications and
Information Ministry and the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry) have the authority to regulate but have no authority over implementation.
In a number of countries, there is some kind of digital transformation executing agency (such as in Australia with its Digital Transformation Agency) fully authorized to implement various policies within the framework of digital transformation. It should be considered whether a digital transformation executing agency needs to be set up in Indonesia or whether the authority should be delegated to a certain non-ministerial government institution (LPNK) having the personnel and institutional capacity to execute digital transformation.
Eko Prasojo
Lastly, we surely need not worry as citizens of Indonesia have a command of information technology, robotics, AI and other technology that can bring benefits to the nation and state. The government only needs to build the ecosystem for the growth and development of such innovations. May it happen.
Eko Prasojo, Executive Secretary, National Bureaucratic Reform Steering Committee; Deputy Minister of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform, 2011-2014.
This article was translated by Aris Prawira.
