T

he South Jakarta Population and Civil Registration Agency is using a cellular phone application system to help speed up the verification process for electronic identity card (e-KTP) issuance.

Agency head Sapto Wibowo said on Tuesday that he decided to go beyond formality and created a phone application chat system to improve the performance of his personnel.

“We made a Whatsapp chat group with our officers in each subdistrict,” he said as quoted by beritajakarta.com.

He said that when the agency needed to verify data, it just sent the ID numbers of residents in the group so that officers in each subdistrict could immediately follow up on it.

Sapto said that with the group, residents who had trouble with their data did not need to visit his office in Kebayoran Baru, which was quite far from some people’s homes.

“They can just simply go to their subdistrict office to fix the data,” he said, adding that saved residents time and transportation costs.

He said the system was quite effective as many data problems could be solved fast.

“We can solve around 200 problems. They comprise double data in the registration system as well as glitches in downloading data from the bio-metric recording system to the chip in the card,” he said.

As of Tuesday, 1.54 million out of 1.56 million residents in South Jakarta had registered for e-KTPs.