Fake Attendance of Civil Servants
The case of attendance manipulation involving thousands of civil servants (ASN) in Brebes is not merely an administrative disciplinary violation. It is a cracked mirror reflecting the erosion of bureaucratic integrity—a longstanding problem now manifesting in a new guise through digital technology.
We are not dealing with an isolated incident, but a systemic phenomenon. When around 3,000 ASN are suspected of using an application to falsify attendance coordinates, what is at stake is not just physical presence in the office, but moral presence in fulfilling public trust.
The state pays them not merely to be “recorded as present”, but to work, serve, and provide benefits.
Digital transformation, which should serve as an instrument to strengthen governance, is instead being toyed with.
Here, the irony is clear: technology designed to close loopholes for cheating is being breached and collectively exploited.
This shows one important thing—that digitalisation without integrity will only shift old practices to a new medium. From manual “proxy attendance”, it has now shifted to GPS manipulation. The method changes, but the mentality remains.
A digital-based attendance system that is not equipped with layered verification mechanisms—such as biometrics, behavioural analytics, or real-time audits—is indeed vulnerable to abuse.
However, these technical weaknesses should have been anticipated if internal oversight were functioning effectively.
At this point, we need to examine the role of the regional inspectorate. Has the oversight function been carried out optimally?
The fact that this practice is suspected to have occurred on a large scale indicates a systemic failure in internal controls.
Administrative and formalistic oversight is no longer adequate to address increasingly sophisticated patterns of deviation.
Furthermore, this case also uncovers a more subtle but dangerous issue: the permissive culture within the bureaucracy.
When deviant practices are carried out en masse, it is hard to believe that no one knew.
The “everyone knows” (TST) phenomenon becomes a kind of silent consensus that perpetuates violations. In such situations, integrity does not just weaken—it becomes an anomaly.