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5 cities improve governance, services via online systems

Five cities — Surabaya in East Java, Bandung and Bogor in West Java, Makassar in South Sulawesi and Jakarta — are using the Internet and various smartphone applications to improve their public services and implement their good-governance systems

The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
Thu, April 16, 2015

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5 cities improve governance, services via online systems

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ive cities '€” Surabaya in East Java, Bandung and Bogor in West Java, Makassar in South Sulawesi and Jakarta '€” are using the Internet and various smartphone applications to improve their public services and implement their good-governance systems.

Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini told the seminar in Jakarta that an online system had helped her implement clean and transparent governance.

She has, for example, obliged all her administration staff to input their daily work into an online database to see their performances and to determine their incentives and promotions.

'€œAs the database can be accessed by all the administration'€™s employees, including me, they can compare each other'€™s daily work and performances,'€ Surabaya'€™s first female mayor told the seminar organized by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in collaboration with the Foreign Ministry'€™s center for education.

The mayor said Surabaya, which has won smart government, smart living and smart environment awards, had found its Internet and online systems useful for identification purposes in last year'€™s AirAsia crash.

'€œWe could promptly trace the addresses of the Surabaya citizens who were victims of the crash through our online citizenry data although the airline provided us with their names only,'€ she said.

Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil told the audience that his administration'€™s online system, called the Bandung Command Center, had helped simplify licensing procedures and reduce physical meetings at its institutions.

Such simplification, he said, was important because the Home Ministry provided only about 20 percent of replacements for Bandung civil servants who had retired.

To find more ideas for the development of its online system, Bandung would host a smart-city summit on April 22 as part of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Asian-African Conference.

At the summit, experts and representatives from various countries in Asia and Africa would share their experiences in developing their smart-city concepts, he said.

Bogor Mayor Bima Arya said at the seminar that his administration had made a breakthrough in its taxation services by launching earlier this month an online tax reporting and payment system, through which taxpayers could pay their taxes and file tax payment reports online.

He said Bogor was now preparing a paperless government system by, among other things, electronically processing its licensing processes and internal correspondence.

'€œWe are actually inspired by Surabaya and Bandung,'€ said the mayor, who took office last year.

Makassar has also introduced a smart-city program for its public services in cooperation with state-owned telecommunications firm PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom).

Telkom said in a press statement that the program, launched last August, focused on optimizing the use of information technology to create effective, efficient and transparent governance.

According to the statement, the Makassar administration provides five smart-city applications '€” an e-office to simplify the administration'€™s correspondence, e-kelurahan to simplify citizenry data administration processes, e-puskesmas to provide and monitor public health care, Makassar Tidak Rantasa to address public complaints directly to the administration and Kuciniki, a location-based application to monitor administration officers'€™ job performances.

Jakarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama has also expressed his interest in applying cards similar to those developed by the Makassar administration. (prm)

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