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round 1.8 million Depok residents are now able to report incidents and acquire information about traffic in the municipality online, following the official launch of the Depok Police'€™s Twitter account @restadepok, on Friday.

Depok Police chief Sr. Comr. Achmad Kartiko said the Twitter service was an addition to the already established hotline number 110 and text message hotline number 083808010000 '€” which operated 24 hours a day.

'€œOur responses will be in real time whenever a resident makes a report. Our officers will immediately go to the scene,'€ he said after the launch of the Twitter service, which is part of the Depok Police Command Center at the Depok Police headquarters.

Achmad said the center was the first phase of a bigger project to establish a more integrated and interactive information system for residents, as well as to complement the limited police force and their 38 patrol cars.

He said the police would integrate the center in the near future with close circuit television (CCTV) cameras set up in 15 locations, and would cooperate with shopping centers and private companies that already had CCTV to monitor the municipality together.

The Jakarta Police and a number of government organizations in Jakarta have reduced their distance from the public through social media websites like Facebook and Twitter.

Among the Twitter accounts run by government and city agencies are @TMCPoldaMetro, which belongs to the Jakarta Police'€™s traffic division, @infoBMKG, which is managed by the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), @PoskoDPUDKI, which is managed by the Jakarta Public Works Agency, @CommuterLine, the official Twitter account of PT KAI Commuter Jabodetabek (KCJ) and @BLUTransJakarta, the Twitter account of Transjakarta Management Agency.

People are expecting better public services from these agencies now they have Twitter accounts.

Hari Ambari, an analyst with Awesometrics, a social media and mass media monitoring agency, recently said that government social media accounts should be able to cut bureaucracy to give immediate answers to the public'€™s questions or complaints.

He said government agencies or companies that already had Twitter accounts should also have the technology to educate their followers to use the hash tag to talk about certain topics.