Surabaya Becomes Pilot City for Digital Social Protection Application
Surabaya has officially been selected as one of the pilot project locations for the trial of the digital Social Protection (Perlinsos) application, situated in Pakis Sub-district, Surabaya, East Java, as part of a public service reform to cut bureaucratic red tape. Secretary General of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Robben Rico, explained in Surabaya on Friday that this trial is a continuation of the first successful piloting in Banyuwangi. In total, 42 districts/cities across Indonesia are serving as trial locations for this digital transition.
Robben highlighted the main advantage of the digital Perlinsos application, which is now supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. The new system is capable of drastically accelerating the process of determining eligibility for social assistance recipients. “The old manual process had a very long bureaucratic chain. It had to be proposed in stages from the neighbourhood unit (RT), community unit (RW), sub-district, district, then decided by the Regional Head, before being sent to the Ministry of Social Affairs and processed with Statistics Indonesia (BPS). That took up to three months,” said Robben Rico.
According to him, the AI-based digital system can cut the registration time that previously took months. “Then, to analyse and decide whether someone is eligible or not to receive assistance, the system only needs 15 to 45 minutes. This cuts bureaucracy and governance tremendously,” he stated. This system change is based on findings from the National Economic Council (DEN) data, which showed a significant amount of misdirected social assistance distribution due to subjective factors in the field.
Robben revealed that through this Perlinsos application, eligibility decisions are made entirely by the system based on objective data. He believes the application can minimise the phenomenon of ‘entrusted’ recipients. “We are heading there. Slowly but surely we are working on it,” he said. Director General of Public Communication and Media at the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs (Komdigi), Fifi Aleyda Yahya, emphasised that this digitalisation of social assistance is not merely about migrating data from manual methods to a digital application.
“This is a governance improvement to strengthen accuracy, increase transparency, and ensure that aid is right on target. Komdigi’s role here is to provide data-related services,” said Fifi. Komdigi is tasked with integrating data from various ministries and agencies as verification guidance in the field. The integrated data includes information from the Civil Registry (Dukcapil), the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN), the Vehicle Registration System (Samsat), the Traffic Corps (Korlantas), the Social Security Agency (BPJS), and other related institutions.
“With this integration, citizen data verification becomes much faster. If it’s just registration, it takes 1-2 minutes. The 15 to 45-minute timeframe already includes any appeal process from citizens. We hope that through this trial, public digital literacy will also increase,” she said. Head of the Surabaya Social Affairs Office, Antiek Sugiharti, revealed that the City of Heroes was directly appointed by the central government as one of the expansion piloting areas. Before targeting Pakis Sub-district, initial trials and Technical Guidance (Bimtek) were successfully conducted in Ketabang and Genteng Sub-districts, and are now being developed into the Sawahan District area.
“We test this application every day. Through this collaboration, residents who have compatible mobile phones can register independently. For those who do not have devices, this is where the agents we have prepared play a role in helping the community on the ground,” said Antiek. To date, the Surabaya Social Affairs Office has recorded only around 300 to 400 citizen data entries in this trial system. The data input process is evaluated daily with relevant ministries to map technical obstacles in the application before a mass launch. “The primary basis for accessing this Digital Perlinsos application is the Digital Population Identity (IKD). Therefore, agents in the field have a dual task, namely helping residents activate their IKD while also registering them into the Perlinsos system,” she said.