JAKARTA – Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform (PANRB) Ministry received a visit from a delegation of the Royal Thai Parliament and representatives of the Royal Thai Embassy.
The delegation was led by Chairman of the Standing Committee on Political Development, Mass Communication, and Public Participation of the House of Representatives of the Kingdom of Thailand Parit Wacharasindhu.
The visit was conducted to learn about Indonesia’s bureaucratic reform experience, particularly digital transformation, public services, and Apparatus Human Resources.
On that occasion, Minister of PANRB Abdullah Azwar Anas explained the digital transformation that is being carried out by the Government of Indonesia.
“One of them is cutting business processes. As we now have an Electronic-Based Government System (SPBE) architecture and coordination team, we are integrating services in one portal, which starts by stopping the addition of applications, as directed by the President,” he explained when receiving the delegates at the Ministry of PANRB Office, Jakarta, Friday (28/6).
Based on studies conducted in various developed countries, the integration and interoperability of digital services has become a common pattern so the people can access various government services easily.
The solution is to create an agency capable of driving the integration of government digital services commonly referred to as Government Technology (GovTech).
Responding to this situation, Indonesia now has INA Digital as GovTech. Its main task is to unify government digital services that have been separated into thousands of applications belonging to ministries/agencies.
Several priority services will be integrated by INA Digital in one portal. It includes education, health, social assistance, digital payment, digital identity, online driving license, crowd permit, and state apparatus services.
“It is still in progress. We will finish this around September-October 2024,” Anas added.
Mr Parit argues that Thailand and Indonesia face similar challenges, with the government agencies having their own applications that have not been integrated.
“It is easier if people have a one-stop service in one platform. Not only does it facilitate access to public services, but it also leads to efficiency and transparency of the service system,” he explained.
He also said that Thailand is also working on integrating government applications. There are dozens of applications owned by Thai government agencies–there are even agencies that have more than one application.
The challenge is that the system is not easy to integrate and there are sectoral egos of agencies.
Furthermore, Parit is concerned about the digital literacy of people in developing countries to keep up with the digital transformation that is being encouraged by the government.
Although internet access in Thailand is relatively easy like in Indonesia, Thai people face security threats and cybercrime.
“There are quite a lot of users, who are also vulnerable to cybercrime such as phishing or online fraud,” he concluded.