The Ministry of Transport in Indonesia is working to fully digitise our relationship with the road, air, and sea, through the deployment of multiple e-services and mobile platforms.
Recognising that Indonesia’s mobile penetration is one of the highest in the world, it comes as no surprise why the Ministry is embracing mobility.
OpenGov spoke to Inspector General Chris Kuntadi, Ministry of Transport, Indonesia, about how the Ministry is part of the Smart City Development and why its path towards digital transformation is unique in its challenges.
Smart City Development
The Ministry of Transport plays an interesting and important role in the development of Indonesia’s modern infrastructure. As tourism increases to the nation, it is ever more important that transportation hubs are made to be easy to use and attractive for foreigners.
In 2018, the Asian Games will be held in Jakarta. This is putting pressure on the Ministry of Transport to upgrade their transportation services and infrastructure. The aim is to reduce congestion and make the commuting experience better for citizens and visitors alike.
“We are trying to prepare the information on transportation services to make it more accessible to travellers through our online platform and informational videos,” Mr. Kuntadi exclaimed, “Now, we want to use IoT to monitor the movement of people between cities. With this, and using big data, we can analyse the travel patterns of people and see how we can improve these systems.”
With this information, the Ministry can predict the inflow of commuters at certain times and prepare the right amount of resources to facilitate them.
The establishment of a more robust e-ticketing system is another way that the Ministry is working to improve the city transport.
With e-ticketing, commuters can avoid queues and not have to worry about being late due to their commute. Yet, there is still opportunities for them to expand these services to the bus operations.
“This has proven to be especially useful for railways,” Mr. Kuntadi said, “However, we have not developed an e-ticketing system for the buses as they are managed by local enterprises.”
Mr. Kuntadi feels that e-ticketing could help improve Indonesia’s transport services exponentially. He described how it is different in places like the Netherlands, where he was able to purchase his train ticket with his air ticket.
This is where he draws influence for the future of e-ticketing in Indonesia.
Digital Transformation
Mr. Kuntadi emphasised the many efforts taken by the Ministry to drive digital transformation. These efforts include the development of services such as:
- E-Budgeting Monitoring,
- E-Procurement,
- E-Mail,
- E-Office,
- Employment Database Systems,
- Electronic Fingerprint Access,
- Contact Centre 151,
- and Online Licensing in several capacities.
“We are trying to make the Ministry of Transportation open and more accessible for our workers and citizens,” stated Mr. Kuntadi, “Before our online licensing was put in place, our aviation personnel security would have to come into the office and complete a licensing examination by pen and paper. Now, this can all be accessed online.”
Some challenges towards increasing digitisation were due to the lack of consolidation when it came to IT services.
“Each separate unit used to have their own information technology division, since then it has been consolidated to the information technology centre.” Said Mr. Kuntadi, “This has helped make the use and development of ICT within the Ministry, much easier.”
This was precisely the case with budgeting and procurement, as each unit used to be responsible for managing this in a much longer time frame. Now, they report this to the Minister through the e-budget monitoring and e-procurement platforms, allowing for more efficient processing for the Ministry.
There are still some areas of ICT where Mr. Kuntadi said that they are yet to fully develop. For example, when asked about video conferencing, he said that they do not use it as often as they could.
“This could be utilised more often,” Mr. Kuntadi told us, “If we have to go directly to a particular unit, the cost for transportation is high. Video conferencing would eliminate some of the time lost in traveling and result in cost savings.”
Cyber Security
Cyber terrorists continue to target government agencies as the information and control they own, is valuable to them. This is why it is all the more important for such a critical agency, such as the Ministry of Transport, to have an extensive range of security solutions.
“We are especially protective of our IT infrastructure,” Mr. Kuntadi told us, “If a hacker targets an airline and gains access to the network, it could be very dangerous.”
Mr. Kuntadi shared the several ways they are ensuring that their networks and data are protected from harm’s way.
“We have cyber security solutions spanning from firewall, proxy, threat analyser, spam mailscanner, and antivirus,” said Mr. Kuntadi.
The Ministry of Transport has recognised the importance of Cyber Security and continue to implement new solutions to further protect their networks from cyber breaches.
