T

he escapes of fraud suspects such as Gayus H. Tambunan, Nunun Nurbaeti and Muhammad Nazaruddin have been the center of the Indonesian government’s attention for the past few months.

The cases suggest the importance of sound identity management practices in Indonesia.

This is due to the fact that the graft suspects are believed to have been using false or multiple personally identifiable documents to flee Indonesia to other countries and/or to remain at large.

For years, Indonesia has been known to have a weak identity management practice. For example, in Jakarta alone, it is estimated that there are about 250,000 multiple IDs in use.

This was mainly caused by the unsystematic decentralized citizenship databases which allow, among other things, multiple IDs, sometimes with different personal information, to be issued to the same person.

The existence of multiple IDs itself can make administrative matters overly complex. This also creates opportunity for fraud offenders to cover the tracks of their offenses.

Therefore, in February 2011 the Indonesian government initiated the national implementation of the electronic ID (e-ID) system to solve or at least minimize these problems.

With the existence of the e-ID system in sight, society at large will expect that corruption suspects will lose their opportunity to misuse personally identifiable documents to avoid prosecution.

Moreover, the centralized database is expected to support law enforcers in investigating crimes.

Theoretically, these expectations should be fulfilled given that the system is fully functional.

However, not long after the program’s initiation, problems began to unfold all over the country, including a seeming lack of resources to complete the program within the allocated time.

Just as in other countries such as the United Kingdom, the establishment of a centralized identity management system (e.g. the now defunct National Identity Card) is a resource consuming process that needs to be planned and executed carefully.

Another thing worthy of note is the level of the security of the system. Although its storage capacity is relatively small (8 kilobytes) compared to that of other countries (e.g. the Malaysian ID cards have 32 kilobytes) an e-ID card is sufficient to store information at least similar to that of a conventional card.

The limited information (due to limited storage capacity) within the card is expected to minimize the risk of making the card and its database an attractive target for hackers.

Moreover, home minister has stated that the security system of the e-ID and its database is set at a high level which is achieved through collaboration among at least 15 institutions.

Nevertheless, based on the experience of other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, the more centralized the identity database, the higher the risk of data breach.

This demands decision makers need to prepare a contingency plan should the database ever be compromised or cards stolen as it would be difficult, due to the importance of the personal information within, for cardholders to access (even if only temporarily) health services or other essential services.

Regarding its potential to combat fraud in Indonesia, the Single Identity Identification Number within the e-ID system can be used to identify and track down fraud offenders as it contains personally identifiable information of all citizens in the country.

Such a potential can only be optimized if the system is fully up and running, and is always kept updated. This condition is important because if the system is only partially completed, then fraud offenders will seek areas in the system that can still be manipulated for their benefits.

Additionally, the system must be administered by people with high integrity. This is because the human element can be the weakest part of the system, which can be exploited by fraud offenders through, for example, bribery and intimidation.

Assuming that the database itself is virtually impregnable due to the high level of security, false information can still be fed into the system by corrupt administrators.

Finally, it is widely known that fraud offenders are often people with intelligence and are generally well-educated. This explains their ability to adapt to new fraud prevention measures in place.

In the discipline of criminology this is known as “crime displacement”, where crime offenders move around their offenses usually to regain the missing crime opportunity due to some circumstances (for example, new crime prevention measures).

In other words, the government should also be aware of the possibility that fraud offenders may resort to other means to cover their acts or to hide from the authorities, and should prepare countermeasures accordingly.

An important key to win the battle against fraud is to always stay ahead of the fraudsters.