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Citizens going online to fight corruption
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Good citizens -- Local residents queue up at the office of the Population and Civil Registration Agency in Gorontalo to get their electronic identity cards on Sept. 8. (Antara/Adiwinata Solihin)
F
athul Imron found it unbearable dealing with a complicated bureaucracy when he sought to verify the legal documents for the property he had just bought in Surakarta, Central Java.
While fighting back the temptation to turn to local land agency officials who double as middlemen preying on frustrated citizens, Fathul struck a novel idea: seek help from the central government in Jakarta through its public service complaint system, known as LAPOR!
So he texted LAPOR! about his bitter experience in dealing with the land agency bureaucrats. Two days later, to his surprise, he received a response from the land agency and in less than a week, his problem was solved.
A similar such “miracle” happened in Jakarta to Juliani, who had just moved to the city and filed a complaint with LAPOR! about extortion by officials from a subdistrict administration office where she applied for an identity card.
She would not pay Rp 50,000 (US$3.80) as an official demanded because the corrupt bureaucrat refused her request for a receipt. But she gave up when the official lowered his demand to Rp 25,000. However, when she came to the office to collect her card, she was required to pay another Rp 20,000, above the official charge of Rp 3,000.
In a state of fury, she reported the extortion to LAPOR! and only a day went by before her money was returned to her. “I got a response directly from pak Edy who is a senior official [at the subdistrict office] and my Rp 20,000 was paid back to me,” she said, sharing her story on the LAPOR! website.
These success stories are but two of the numerous stories that citizens cheated by corrupt bureaucracies have shared with the public. Since local administrations and the central government have developed their own media outlets to improve public services and transparency, more and more citizens have gone online to air their grievances on issues ranging from neighborhood sanitation to systemic corruption.
Developed by the Office of Presidential Staff (KSP) in 2013, LAPOR! is designed to accommodate citizen complaints. The complaints are registered by visiting www.lapor.go.id, texting 1708, tweeting @LAPOR1708 or visiting LAPOR!’s Facebook page. Reports are treated as confidential and messages are forwarded to related institutions upon request.
Of course, not every complainant is as lucky as Fathul and Juliani. An unhappy story was offered by Melly, an 18-year-old woman who posted a complaint with LAPOR! about being ripped off when she applied for her identity card in Garut, West Java. She had to pay local officials Rp 120,000 but after two weeks of waiting, she had still not received her card.
After another anxious wait, the Home Ministry wrote to her to say that it was her fault that she had paid the illegal fee because every citizen was entitled to their identity card free of charge.
Remarkably, the ministry suggested that Melly visit the crooked officials, lecture them about the law and try to get back her money.
Beside complaints, LAPOR! has also been flooded with requests for all sorts of information about the bureaucracy underpinning the Healthcare and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan).
A user named Yanti Malah from Palembang, South Sumatra, asked for information about the exact amount of her due premium. Her report was forwarded by LAPOR! administrators a week later and she received a response from the local office of the BPJS that same day.
As of Aug. 28, LAPOR! has received 161,425 complaints and 81 percent of them have been marked as “solved”, much to the delight of its administrators. Of the total reports, 12 percent remain unresolved and the remaining 7 percent are being processed.
BPJS Kesehatan tops the list of state agencies that have effectively handled public complaints, solving 59,935 cases. This is followed by the Jakarta administration with 15,167 cases and the Social Affairs Ministry with 15,250 cases. However, the Jakarta administration, the BPJS and the Social Affairs Ministry must still work through 6,977, 6977 and 5,140 unprocessed complaints, respectively.
Gautama Adi Kusuma, a public policy analyst, told The Jakarta Post that LAPOR! was a good example of how citizens could be connected to their elected governments in this digital era when about 90 million Indonesians had access to the internet.
It is a good way for people to hold their governments accountable, he added. However, the central government and local administrations must continue to innovate to make the app more widely known to the public, he said.
“The [central] government should ask for assistance from local administrations to ensure that the app is easy to use,” Gautama said, praising it as a “step in the right direction”.
According to a survey conducted in April by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), only 491 of 3,900 respondents from all 34 provinces knew of the existence of LAPOR!.
Another public policy expert, Agus Pambagio, said it was also important that LAPOR! build up its credibility because people will only use these kinds of facilities if they are truly effective.
“But I think LAPOR! will be unable to solve all problems because bureaucracies often have conflicting views about similar issues,” Agus said. (wnd)
