Quo Vadis National Social Data Governance

“Better data is the first step towards upholding justice,” stated Hans Rosling (1948–2017), the renowned Swedish statistician. In today’s context, Hans’s adage finds its relevance amid the country’s serious efforts to build an integrated national social data centre. The chaos in national data governance in the past serves as a lesson on the immense losses due to practices in distributing social assistance (bansos) that missed their targets because of overlapping data. The results of field verification by the Ministry of Social Affairs together with the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) and the Family Hope Programme (PKH) companions in 2025 provide a stark reminder—that out of around 10 million beneficiary families surveyed, approximately 1.9 million were deemed no longer eligible as bansos recipients. This figure is not merely a statistic; it also reflects the extent of policy leakages that have occurred all this time. The breakthrough by the Coordinating Ministry for Empowering Underprivileged Communities under the coordination of Kemenko PM Abdul Muhaimin Iskandar, together with the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), the Ministry of Social Affairs, and related ministries/institutions overlapping with social empowerment issues—must serve as an important foundation. DTSEN is not just an ordinary policy. It also marks a significant shift in data governance—from an administrative approach to a more precise and emancipatory statistical approach. BPS, with its sophisticated census and survey methodologies, has successfully provided a solid foundation of objectivity in the core of DTSEN, where we know previously it was less addressed in bansos data management. DTSEN is not merely a technical innovation, but a fundamental effort to overhaul the way the state distributes welfare. For years, our bansos distribution has faced latent problems: inaccurate data, overlaps, and rife with patronage potential. This problem reveals a pattern: our social policies have run too long in the “just distribute” logic. When data accuracy is weak, bansos easily slips into a tool for distributing interests, not an instrument for social justice. The impact of that is the flourishing of patronage relations, leading to a situation where access to assistance is often determined by proximity, not need.