Prabowo targets world-class digital government for Indonesia

President Prabowo Subianto is targeting a world-class digital government for Indonesia, with all possible public services accessible online so that the public no longer faces convoluted bureaucracy. He asserted that digital transformation must be the government’s main agenda to deliver faster, easier, and more efficient public services. “I want Indonesia to have a world-class digital government,” Prabowo said during a Plenary Cabinet Session at the State Palace in Jakarta on Monday. According to the President, all government services must be available digitally so that the public no longer needs to queue for hours or move from one office to another. He further stated that government digitalisation is a non-negotiable step. He asked all ministries and agencies to end the practice of using dozens of unconnected applications, which only complicates matters for the public. “Government digitalisation is something we absolutely must do. We cannot have dozens of applications that do not talk to each other; we cannot ask the people to enter the same data repeatedly,” he said. In addition, Prabowo noted that the digitalisation of social assistance programmes is beginning to show results. Based on a report from the National Economic Council (DEN), the programme has been implemented in 43 districts/cities across 26 provinces, with around one million families registered out of a target of 12.5 million families. He said that before digitalisation was implemented, a family could spend around Rp150,000 to process various documents and register for social assistance. Now, the process can be done free of charge. “Now the process can be done for free. This is a direct benefit of digitalisation,” he said. Nevertheless, the President assessed that the government must go further by integrating various national databases, from social, population, education, health, employment, and housing data to beneficiary data, with a strong security system. According to him, data integration is key to ensuring social assistance is well-targeted and that errors due to outdated data no longer occur.