The newly-appointed Special Staff for Digital Transformation of the Minister of State Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform (PANRB), Pandu Putra, shares how coordination and consistency are key to the success of the government's digital transformation.
For the Minister of State Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform (PANRB)'s Special Staff for Digital Transformation, Pandu Putra, the biggest challenge with digitising the Indonesian government is not the process or the technology, but the people.
When policy makers and the people involved accept the need to change, the technology and process will follow, he says.
Talking to GovInsider, Pandu says bureaucrats need to be agile and open-minded to any changes in society. This allows the organisation to more easily adapt to changing plans midway, without it being seen as a policy mistake or a waste of budget, he adds.
"If bureaucrats are willing to leave the legacy ways behind, everything will be much easier. The next step is to ensure that digital technology is used properly in accordance with the business processes that stakeholders agree to," he says.
Championing transformation
PANRB Minister Rini Widyantini has appointed Pandu as a special staff to strengthen the ministry's strategy to promote the government’s digital transformation. He is tasked with providing strategy and advice to the minister, as well as assisting her with internal and cross-ministerial coordination matters.
"I want to ensure that the policies issued by the minister are correct and in line with existing developments," says Pandu.
Pandu pointed out that his new position also requires him to communicate with other stakeholders outside the PANRB Ministry, including related ministries and institutions as well as the private sector.
According to him, the PANRB Ministry is like the government's Chief Operating Officer as it carries out various functions that include organisational development, business processes, apparatus resource improvement, performance management, public services and reforms.
"My job is to align the objectives of digital transformation with other functions of the ministry," he says.
Pain points in digital government
Pandu highlights two main pain points in implementing digital government: technical and non-technical. The non-technical aspect is how to coordinate and harmonise the interests of each stakeholder.
"It sounds cliché. But with a bureaucracy the size of the one Indonesia has, this is inevitable."
For instance, when the government issued the Presidential Regulation on Acceleration of Digital Transformation and Integration of Digital Services that birthed GovTech INA Digital, there was a tug-of-war that consumed time. The issue, among others, was who would manage the data and services.
He notes that this is understandable as all government ministries and agencies want to advance their respective services, with or without GovTech. However, for a common goal, “all stakeholders must be willing to sit together to create mechanisms and business processes that are acceptable to all”.
"There will never be a specific formula to solve this problem. All we can do is listen and understand the needs of each organisation," he continues.
The next challenge is technical. There is a tendency for the government to enact policies that are unfocussed and produce results that are not as expected.
This problem, says Pandu, can be solved if the government focuses on a few policies that have high leverage to achieve development goals such as poverty alleviation or increasing state revenue.
For the Ministry of PANRB, these goals can be achieved through digital government systems, integrated digital services and digital public infrastructure (DPI), he adds.
"The Ministry has included these digital initiatives as priority programmes in the National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN) document, as a guideline for all ministries and agencies in working on their programmes for the next five years," he continues. Advancing digital government
With almost 10 years of experience in public sector innovation, Pandu sees the journey of digital government in Indonesia as promising, although improvements are needed here and there.
Since the government announced the digital government framework through the Presidential Regulation on Electronic-Based Government System in 2018, Indonesia's digital government mission has made significant advances. The crowning moment is the establishment of GovTech INA Digital last year.
"I see this as the result of a long and not easy process ... at one point proving that if we are consistent, then the digital government system will continue to grow," Pandu says.
He adds that many private sector technology experts are joining the government to strengthen the digital government movement, including himself.
"They, including me, came armed with idealism and fresh ideas. However, we cannot voice our new ideas without a willingness to listen to what the government needs and understand the challenges faced by the bureaucracy," Pandu notes.
The ability to navigate the bureaucracy will be decisive. Many tech professionals who join the government become frustrated because they do not understand how the bureaucracy works.
He is optimistic that the impact of the government's digital transformation will be recognised sooner than later, along with a more focused policy direction and refined several regulations.
According to Pandu, the government is currently reviewing technical regulations to encourage the implementation of digital public infrastructure (DPI) with a focus on the social protection aspect, which provides cash to the poor and uses credentials derived from data owned by interconnected government agencies.
The registration process for government social assistance programmes will use digital ID authentication and the disbursement of funds will be done through digital payments to each recipient's account.
"This regulation will be directed at how this protocol can be brought down to the application level and make it easy for ministries to exchange data without being burdened with bureaucratic processes," he explains.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Mochamad Azhar
Quelle/Source: GovInsider, 10.03.20925
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