Abdullah Azwar Anas, Minister of State Apparatus and Bureaucratic Reform (PANRB) observed that the state digital public service sector is still fractured by agency, sector, and silo-based systems. As a result, citizens must frequently enter similar data and create several accounts to access various digital-based public sector services. Therefore, the next Electronic-Based Government System (SPBE) aims to improve unity by providing a single access system for the country’s digital services, resulting in better public service quality.
“The Presidential Decree on the Architecture of the National SPBE also aims to integrate separate digital services into an inclusive digital service through the National Government Administration Portal and the National Public Service Portal, aka digital Public Service Mall (MPP),” Anas explained in a meeting with representatives from various ministries/agencies at the Ministry of Home Affairs office in Jakarta.
The government is making significant efforts to advance SPBE, including introducing Digital Public Service Malls (MPP) as one of SPBE’s manifestations. SPBE is also a part of President Joko Widodo’s Thematic Bureaucratic Reform to digitise government services.
The Thematic Bureaucratic Reform focuses on five areas: poverty reduction, increased investment, digitisation of services, domestic spending, and inflation management. The thematic bureaucratic reform scheme has been implemented and will be applied inside the TNI (national army), Polri (federal police), and the Attorney General’s Office.
Furthermore, the government has physically constructed and inaugurated more MPPs. In the future, all regions will have MPPs that are not only physical but also digital, containing all government services based on population statistics (Digital ID). According to the advice of the President and Vice President, MPP Digital has become the ministry’s short-term focus.
As a result, the Ministry PANRB, in collaboration with the Ministries of Home Affairs, Communication and Informatics, BSSN, and Finance, is working to execute Thematic Bureaucratic Reforms. According to the President’s directives, the programme must impact society through the execution of SPBE.
The PANRB ministry would continue supervising SPBE implementation through the SPBE Coordinating Team. To design SPBE architecture, the team requires a plan and linked steps. The national SPBE architecture is supposed to maintain the integration of National Digital Services while handling the national programme theme.
The plan clarified each job description to eliminate overlapping work and maximise the coordinated approach. The structure will also serve as a guide to align digitisation initiatives to make them more effective and efficient. In addition, a timeframe for the implementation plan has been established to simultaneously carry out the National SPBE Architecture strategic effort.
Johnny G. Plate, Minister of Communication and Informatics, who also participated in the coordination meeting, explained that the Ministry of Communication and Information is currently building a National Data Centre (PDN), a government service liaison system, and an intra-government network to support SPBE. In addition, the Ministry of Communication and Informatics also develops and harmonises applications, creates SPBE super-apps, and employs big data analytics and artificial intelligence in collaboration with other ministries/institutions.
President Jokowi indicated that the bureaucracy movement must relate to the government’s main aims for the bureaucracy to impact society. With 4.2 million government employees in Indonesia, the government created a new performance measure for them. All the KPIs (key performance indicators) are aligned with the government’s main initiatives, which include investment, poverty, digitisation, inflation, and TKDN (domestic component level in government spending).
Assessment of bureaucratic reform (RB) of ministries/agencies and regional governments as of 2023 must be more directed towards fixing downstream community problems that are the government’s priority, namely poverty eradication, improved investment, digitising services, spending on domestic products, and inflation control.
