Perludem Proposes Digitalisation of Political Party Financial Governance

The Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) has proposed implementing digitalised financial governance for political party financial assistance, or ‘banpol’, through an E-Banpol system. Perludem Executive Director Heroik Mutaqin Pratama stated that digitalisation is essential to resolve the convoluted manual reporting system. “As well as to encourage political party transparency,” Heroik said during an online discussion entitled ‘E-Banpol: Transformation of Political Party Financial Governance’ on Friday, 3 July 2026.

According to him, the current mechanism for political party financial assistance is mired in administrative complexity. This complexity is not commensurate with the level of transparency achieved. “Banpol reporting is only oriented towards minimum compliance, with a relatively high administrative burden compared to transparency,” he said.

Heroik identified three problems with the current assistance system. First, the uneven human resource capacity of parties in managing financial reports. Second, the dominance of an administrative approach that ignores performance indicators. Third, inefficient and fragmented processes that are difficult to monitor directly. He argued that these conditions could drive parties to seek other, illegal sources of funding. “Or lead to political corruption practices to meet the party’s operational needs,” he said.

Perludem proposed the implementation of E-Banpol to transform governance from a manual, physical document-based mechanism into a digital system. Four main actors are involved in the system’s workflow: political parties, the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri), the Audit Board of Indonesia (BPK), and the general public. Under E-Banpol, political parties are required to activate an account to apply for assistance digitally. Once verified by Kemendagri, funds will be disbursed directly to the party’s account. The system also allows parties to report expenditures simultaneously as soon as funds are used, without having to wait until the end of the year.

With this system, every detail of expenditure and type of political party activity is directly integrated electronically. The public can also monitor how state funds are managed. Technically, E-Banpol is supported by a system encompassing three strategic layers. The first is the transaction and compliance layer, which ensures that applications, usage, and audits proceed in an orderly manner within the applicable legal and government regulatory corridors. The second layer is interoperability, enabling cross-sector data exchange through a single integrated gateway, thus facilitating coordination between the distributing ministry, political parties, and the audit board. The third layer is transparency and oversight, allowing the public to monitor via a digital dashboard in stages, where the flow of party financial balances is no longer a rigid secret but information that can be accounted for openly.