MOVING TOWARD INDONESIAN e-GOVERNMENT

Prepared by: Ishak A Wahyudi

Preface
Electronic government or usually called e-government as per World Bank
definition as we can see it in www.worldbank.or refers to the use of
information and communications technologies to improve the efficiency,
effectiveness, transparency and accountability of government. Another
simple definition rephrase by Paulus Bambang WS for e-government is
“Putting citizen, business, and government institution ON-line not IN-line or
OFF-line”
For the first definition, mention above we can see in the definition that
there are interaction between government institution and its stakeholders
via high technology communication media. In second definition, we can also
know that there are certain hopes that government institution can shift the
relationship from off-line (not face to face) or in-line (queuing) to on-line
(directly)

Benefits
In general, there are several benefits for the government institutions who
use e-government in their communication, the benefits could be categorized
into two types; tangible benefit and intangible benefits.
1. Reduce cost
Using technology for improving process can cause some efficiency in
their cost for example; government can shift their photocopying cost to
using diskette or CD-ROM for distributing their data.
2. Reduce time to process
Off course, also applying computer in the process can eliminate several
waste time for typing and archiving.
The intangible benefits for applying e-govt are:
1. Increase level of services
2. Encourage the development of knowledgeable resources
3. Increase nation competitiveness
4. Enable information exchange
5. Establishment of virtual community
6. Decrease corruption

Actually the ultimate goal of the e-government is the Good Governance it

self. There are three pillar to cope the ultimate goal such as; Transparency,
Accountability; and Public Participation. We could see that e-government
will use those as the way to reach the ultimate goal. First government
institution would build transparency via interactions and communication,
second government institution build accountability via publishing their
output and product to the stakeholders, and last government institution
could use public for deriving information that related to their operation.

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Interaction in E-Government
As we mention before that the interaction or relationship in e-govt could be
categorized in to three types such as:
1. G2G Interaction between government institution with other
government institution
2. G2B Interaction between government institution with business
institution
3. G2C Interaction between government institution with customer or
citizen
Those interactions reflected from the government institution stakeholders
or customer, and talking about customer, we should consider the customer
as:
1. Internal customer or their employees, ordinates and sub ordinates
2. External customer such as other government institution, businesses,
and citizens

Phase in E-Government
There are several topic to be discussed in e-government such as; security,
data base, net-work, but to focus the paper, I would like to concentrate
only to the content of information would be published to the public
When moving toward e-government, government institution will encounter
with four phase. Those phases also reflected the need of both the
institution and stakeholders, so the phase not solely should be stepped one
by one but also could be jump from one-step to another. Those phases are:
1. Publishing when government institution release information to public,
this phase also called one-way delivering system.
2. Interactivity when public can communicate directly with government
institution, this phase also named two-way communication systems.
3. Completing transaction when government institution could serve
public need for their services
4. Delivery when government institution can deliver their products or
services to customer directly.
Usually when delivering information to the public for applying e-
government, government institutions use internet as the media, but several
requirements might occur for using the internet such as:
1. Information content; the content of information putting inside the
web site should be simple and easy to understand because the
government should reach very large audience that differs in all
manners. Another thing that should be considered is the language;
choice of the language would depend on what kind of market that
would be reaching by the institution.
2. Information media; the type of media also affected the quality of
information to deliver; the media should be simple and fast for
reaching the public. In this type, also include the choice of hosting
agents, software, and hardware.

Depending on those phase in e-government dissemination there are several

applicable operation for government institution.
Phase publishing:

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 1. Web site
2. E-mail
This is the first phase occurred when the institution release several
information for public disclosure.
Depending of the preparation, planning and design, the web site would go
further to the next phase.

Phase interactivity
1. Data base interchange
2. Web based data base
3. Form
From the first time to this phase, the institution would prepare some data
base application than use it as data interchangeable or communicable to the
public, business or other government institutions.

Phase completing transaction

1. Form of transaction
2. E-purchasing
3. E-library
4. Digital signature
This is the phase that has been waited by the public, in this phase, public or
customer can interact directly with the government institution by
completing transaction form and sending it via web site or application
program. With this phase several beaurocracy procedures can be eliminated
that is mean efficiency in money, time and resources.

Phase of delivery
1. E-learning
2. E-transfer
3. Download program or software
This is the highest phase where the government institution can deliver its
product or temporary acceptable product directly to its customer.

Moving to the real world, I would summarize what Government Indonesian

Institution has done in applying e-government.

Coordinating Team for “Telematika” in Indonesia

On April 7, 2000 Government of Indonesia create the Coordinating Team for
Telematika in Indonesia by releasing Presidential Decree Number 50 Year of
2000 (http://www.ri.go.id/produk _uu/isi/keppres2000/no31sd50-
2000/no50-2000.html). As per definition the word “telematika” stand for
Telecommunication, Media and Information, which means that telematika
will cover the way, the hardware and the content of information technology
in Indonesian Government included The E-government as one of the section
covered in Coordinating Team of Telematika scope of work.
The team headed by Vice President will consist of some Ministries, State
ministry, and Boards in Indonesia as their members (organization structure
of the team attached). The job of the team are; to design Telematika Policy
in Indonesia, place a step and priority for using telematika, monitor and

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control telematika application and also coordinate all efforts regarding to
application of information technology in Indonesia.
Parallel to the creation of the team, Government of Indonesia also create
The Presidential Instruction Number 6 Year 2001 dated April 24, 2001
(http://www.ri.go.id/produk_uu/isi/inpres2001/ip%206-2001.html) to all
head of Department, State Department and Non-departmental Institution
(Boards)

Development and Exploitation of Telematika in Indonesia

As the Presidential Instruction said, there are four elemental instructions
such as:
1. Applying continuing development and exploitation of Telematika in
the frame work as it attached in the instruction.
2. Giving facilitation to public to conduct in development of telematika.
3. All the activity of development and exploitation of telematika should
be coordinated with Coordinating Team of Telematika in Indonesia.
4. The Instruction should be fulfilled and report al the step of activity to
the President.
On the attachment of The Instruction, there are five major concerns for
developing and exploitation telematika in Indonesia:
1. The Preface, describing about the background why the instruction has
been released.
2. Telematika to unity Nation and Citizen talking about the objective of
telematika in Indonesia.
3. Telematika from public to public is talking about citizen interaction
and government effort to facilitate citizen interaction.
4. National Information Infrastructure talking about Government to
Private Sector interaction
5. Private Sector and Business Climate talking about some pre-
requirement for Government to Private Sector Interaction
6. Capacity and Technological Improvement is talking about Research
and Development, Education, Cooperation and Motivating Factor for
telematika.
7. Government on-line talking about specific consideration that is e-
government
8. Coordinating Team for Telematika in Indonesia talking about the
team that will handle the coordination in telematika.

Base on that Presidential Instruction, Coordinating Team for Telematika in

Indonesia has established some action (detail action plans attached, see
Action Plan.doc) divided into four major categories summarized below:
I. Policy and Legal Framework
1. Policy
a. Telecommunication year last in 2003
b. Information Technology year last in 2005
c. E-commerce year last in 2003
2. Legal frame-work
a. Information Technology year last in 2002

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 b. E-commerce year last in 2003
3. Institutional Development year last in 2005
II. Human Capacity Building year last in 2005
III. Infrastructure year last in 2005
IV. Application
1. Application for the government year last in 2005
2. Applications for the Private Sectors year last in 2005
From that action plan, I see some interesting point especially in the section
IV. 1 “Application for the Government” that relate to the development of e-
government.
First, planning of e-government should begin in the year of 2001 where all
the government institution should prepare all the information provided to
the public. Second, easy access will be permitted for institutions to begin in
the year of 2002 means that government institution only have one year to
build and publish their information to the public. In the same year
government institution should also develop e-procurement. Third,
Interaction phase should begin in the year of 2003 both for public and also
for other government institution.
While focusing on the application for the government the action also made
some action that focused to the private sector as a cushion to support for
deploying information to the public such as electronic access, internet kiosk
and other.

Result for E-government in Indonesia

The result of all the effort for developing e-government in Indonesia, I will
focus to the information content that has been publish to the public via web
site and related it to the time schedule in the action plan.
Up to October 20, 2001 there are 293 web sites under government
organization category (the nomenclature can be described as; www.name
of institution.go.id, source: http://tukang.access.net.id ) from those data
69 units have been categorized as Central Government, 100 as Local
Government and 29 as Central Government Sub Division. For this point we
can see the development of the web site was not organized well event for
Central Government, typically the web site begin from sub division and
going up then create the bigger one (Ministry Level).

No. Category Amount

1 Central Government 72*
2 Central Government Sub Division 48
3 Committee 6
4 Local Government 154
5 State Owned Enterprises 13
Total 293
*There are some redundancy web sites for example 72 central government web sites as the result of cabinet
reorganization. The actual central government units counted only 69 units.

From 69 units of Central Government, 12 institutions has not released a web

site and from 57 unit 22 web site has been down for a while, means there
are no connections to those government web sites. In summary there are

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only 35 web sites that operate well (can be seen by public) or 50,72% from
all the central government institution that can be accessed by the public.
More details, from all the web sites that has been operate well the
information that has been publish maximum only in the phase of interaction
or almost all of the web sites only in the phase of publishing (see Web
site.xls). It seems match if we relate to the schedule given by the Team, but
the year of 2001 will pass in two months later and the question will occur
whether the institution that has not build web site yet could fulfill the time
schedule from the action plan.

Financial and Development Supervisory Board Action Plan and

Result
The Board has been created in 1983 and modified in 2001(Organization
structure of the Board attached). The Board is a non-departmental
government institution in Republic of Indonesian Government. The job of
the board according to Presidential Decree Number 103 year 2001
(http://www.ri.go.id/produk_uu/isi/keppres2001/kp103'01.htm) is as part
of government job in financial and development supervisory according to
the government regulation (Government Internal Auditor), it means that the
ultimate objective of the Board is decreasing corruption and
mismanagement in governmental institution. From 2001, the Board has a
new unit called “Information System Center” that some of the center job
act as the Coordinating Team for Telematika Job internally in the Board.
The head of the Board have formalized the Job by releasing Head of the
Board Decree Number Kep-04.01.00-504/K/2001 dated August 21, 2001
subject The Coordinating Team of Management Information System in BPKP.
By this decree, the head of the information system act as a Daily Chairman
for coordinating all information system technology in the board
organization.
Up to now, the board has a Local Area Network with 148 nodes spread to the
unit in the organization to support daily operational activities of the board.
We have also web site called www.bpkp.go.id in the phase of interaction.
The unique type of organization in the board has created the unique type of
Local Area Network Model for the organization. Here in this board we create
distributed but interchangeability data connection for each deputy (sub
ordinate of the head) and biro. Board has 25 regional offices in the capital
city of province across the nation. Beginning in the year of 1997, the
regional offices have been connected via e-mail for communicating and data
transmitting for the operational report of the regional office.
According the board master plan, in the year of 2004 the board should
release interchangeability database for all the unit of the board.

Problems
As I describe above there are several problems and barriers occur while the
problem of putting e-government in-place could be categorized into five
types:
1. Man; including leadership, culture, and political will

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 The organization structure and the regulation in government institution
are very different with the private sector. Employee has been recruited
base on the organization needs, and usually the needs are for lower level
employee. It means that almost all the employee begin from lower level
employee (High position recruitment is rarely), for these reason here
seniority become usual.
Payment structure in government base on the regulation declare by
government, the structure has been categorize from level to level with
the generally the same amount for the same level. For these reason
employee will compete to reach the highest level or position to get
enough payment.
Technology needs some person that have better education, and by the
problem mention above, most of person who getting involve in taking
care Information Technology are younger person who got higher degree
of education but do not have position to justify the direction. Means that
depend on person who (perhaps) has good leadership and political will
the information technology would be able to develop in those
organizations.
2. Commitment; commitment should come from the top management of
the organization, without the commitment there will be any operational
deployment of information technology.
3. Money; funding problem
Currently Indonesia has fall into economic crisis and move to trust crisis.
Economic crisis made government to focus all the money to elevate the
crisis and to help people whose suffer from the crisis. Almost all the fund
have been put to that major priority, so technology become second or
even third priority.
We can see from Government of Indonesian budget for the year of 2001
said that the propose budget for developing information technology has
been put into Information System and Statistic sub-sector. The allocation
for this sub-sector counted as much as Rp157.683.400.000,- for Routine
Budget and Rp82.225.000.000,- for Development Budget. The percentage
of the budget compare to the total Routine and Development Budget
(Rp190.092.170.000.000,- and Rp43.987.382.900.000,-) are only 0,08%
and 0,19%, and for total percentage is just count for only 0,10%.
4. Organization; Since the presidential decree about the cabinet structure
dated August 9, 2001 up to now, still there is no formal structure decree
for State Ministry for Communication and Information (new State
Ministry). It seems some weird phenomena, since the state ministry job
is to coordinate the telematika in Indonesia and function as an
organization that will subordinate the Coordinating Team for Telematika
in Indonesia.
5. Infrastructure; including law, regulation, technology and direction
Information technology also needs some technological support such as
telecommunication and other infrastructure. Base on the statistic only
7000 people in Indonesia who has telephone and only citizen in city who
have access with the banking system.
Law, regulation and direction are another problem. Up to now
government still does not have fixed and established law, regulation and
direction for applying information technology

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6. Coordination
Coordination among government institution is a crucial matter. It is such
a bad thing if public could gather different data from two or more
institution and becoming worst if people can derive data from institution
that has not jurisdiction to publish that information. For example, it is
such bad thing if the address of Government Embassy abroad put into
Ministry Of Finance Web Site.
7. Standardized system
Standardize system become necessary when comparing and sorting
information. When surfing from one web site to another web site, we
can get the same data with different structure or sort. The different
become annoying because we can compare it or it takes a time to
restructure the data to become comparable. For example, all the state
names in US have been categorized in such manner, so every institution
knows that the code for “CA” is stand for “California”. Further, every US
citizen has one special identification number called “Social Security
Number” (SSN); this number has been used for almost all transaction in
United States and creates an individual transaction history called Credit
History. It is differ to Indonesia where every state called by its long
name and it would be difficult to put in sort. In addition, every state has
its identity umber for its citizen.
In summary, when we operate some data interchangeability the
standardization become very important.

Some Solutions and Starting Points

The problem raised and stated, but how to cope and solve that kind of
problem. Here are several steps of action.
1. Localize exploitation
First steps is to localize, approach and solve the problem one by one
2. Integration
Second steps is integration of all resources
3. Socialization and enforcement of the action plan
The action plan will become just an action plan without any information
distributed and enforcement of the action plan
4. Business process redesign
Third steps is planning and redesigning the business process that would
appropriate to the objective of organization
5. Business network redesign
Forth steps are redesigning the network for the sake of organization
objective.
6. Business scope redefinition
The last step is, after some time past and feed back has been gathered
we can start to redefine organization scope.

Some starting point to be considered:

1. Start from simple services such as Letter Receiving and Delivery
Program, Human Resources Program Application, Asset Management
Program Application and managed it well.
2. Simplify Process and procedure through electronic process system.

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 3. Systematic change in management process through restructurization
and reorganization.

Application to solve problem

1. Real direction of e-govt from mandatory institution
2. Coordination among institution
3. Cyber law and regulation
4. Standardization
5. Socialization and training

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 Attachment 1

Organization Structure for Coordinating Team of Telematika in Indonesia

Head : First Vice President Of Republic of Indonesia

First Vice : Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs
Second Vice and : State Minister for Empowerment of State Apparatus
Daily Chairman
Members : 1. Minister of Home Affairs
2. Minister of Defense
3. Minister of Justice and Human Rights
4. Minister of Finance
5. Minister of Industry and Trade
6. Minister of Transportation
7. Minister of Manpower and Transmigration
8. Minister of Health
9. Minister of National Education
10. State Minister for Research and Technology
11. State Minister for Culture and Tourism
12. State Minister for Revenues and State Companies
13. Minister of Housing and Regional Infrastructure
14. State Secretary
15. State Minister for Head of the National Development
Planning Board/BAPPENAS
Secretary : Deputy for Staffing and Public Service in State Ministry of
Empowerment of State Apparatus
 Attachment 2

FINANCIAL AND DEVELOPMENT SUPERVISORY BOARD

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

Head

First Secretary

Deputy Deputy Deputy Deputy of

Deputy Deputy
Supervision for Supervision for Supervision for Supervision for Supervision for Investigation
Public Country State Owned
Government Government
Accountability Decentralizatio Enterprises
Institution in Institution in
Economic Social and n
Sector Politic Sector

Inspecto Training Research and Information Fungsional

rate Center Development Center Audit Job
Center Center