Indonesia's One Data Bill: When the State Learns to Read Reality

There are families living in hardship who are not recorded as recipients of social assistance. There are plots of land where Islamic boarding schools have been established for a long time, yet they are still recorded as paddy fields on official maps. There are schools facing teacher shortages, while administrative reports indicate that teaching staff numbers are sufficient.

Recently, there has been public outcry regarding the determination of deciles, which many citizens consider erroneous, leading to the loss of their rights to state services because the classifications do not reflect factual conditions. Such errors are frequently identified as data issues. For those experiencing them, the consequences are very real: aid does not arrive, land rights become uncertain, or children study without enough teachers.

Erroneous data can lead the state to make decisions with full confidence about a reality that is not actually understood. Therefore, the One Data Indonesia Bill concerns something much larger than the mere development of an information system.

This Bill concerns the state’s ability to correctly recognise its people and its territories, to bring together knowledge scattered across various institutions, and to act based on that reality. The government generates vast amounts of data. Ministries record data according to their specific duties; local governments understand the conditions of their regions; and villages face the direct changes in the lives of their residents.