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Governor to keep an eye on agencies with smartphones
Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo and his subordinates are using smartphones and wireless email starting this month to communicate with each other instantaneously, an official at the Jakarta Development Planning Board says
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Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo and his subordinates are using smartphones and wireless email starting this month to communicate with each other instantaneously, an official at the Jakarta Development Planning Board says.
Assistant to the board's head of external relations, Puji Siregar, said Saturday the communication platform combining smartphones and wireless email was dubbed M-Gov, short for mobile government.
Puji said smartphones had been rolled out as part of the M-Gov program to make it easier for the governor to monitor and evaluate city budget expenditures.
The City Council and many critics have slammed the Jakarta administration in the past for disbursing the city's budget too slowly. In April this year, members of the City Council criticized the administration for failing to use 79 percent of its 2008 budget.
"With M-Gov, the governor can find out about issues straight away, and can monitor as well as evaluate the work of all city agencies in *real time'," she said.
"The agencies will no longer have a reason not do their work, with excuses such as late budget disbursements," she said.
"Public servants should work around the clock despite problems, because the public needs services 24 hours a day," she said.
She said the M-Gov program also allowed executives - such as agency heads, mayors or subdistrict leaders - to immediately contact each other.
The program would also provide the governor with immediate updates on events occurring in city. Puji referred to the city administration's traffic management center and crisis center. "Information from these centers would be directly forwarded to the governor," she said.
The governor is now able to monitor all the agencies' work on the spot and is able to work at faster pace, she added.
"Previously there was very little monitoring at all.
"We can imagine it like this: In the past, employees probably worked at a pace of around 25 kilometers an hour, now they have to work at 125 kilometers an hour," she said.
The program also lessens the possibilities of corruption at the administrative level and allows members of the public to report city problems to the governor.
"The public can take a picture of a pothole and send it to the governor," she said.
Krisantus Sembiring, an M-Gov expert, wrote on jakarta.wartaegov.com that countries like Germany and Singapore were already using platforms such as M-Gov.
However, in the other countries, M-Gov tended to be used to connect the government and the public rather than government officials.
In Singapore, a similar communication platform allows citizens to use their smartphones to access information like social security data or renew their passports.
