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akarta Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama has revealed that he is evaluating district and subdistrict heads through their performance in regard to the city'€™s online complaint and response phone applications Qlue and Cepat Respon Opini Publik (CROP).

Qlue is a crowd-sourcing smartphone application for residents in which users can report various matters, such as flooding, illegal garbage dumps, potholes and poor pedestrian facilities, and city officials respond through the CROP Jakarta smartphone application. Relevant civil servants and officials nearest to the reported incidents are contacted through their smartphones and should respond to the reports.

'€œI want to know how district and subdistrict heads utilize the CROP application. I have the app on my phone and I can monitor how they respond to the reports,'€ Ahok announced at City Hall in Central Jakarta on Thursday.

He said that he had noticed that a number of subdistrict heads were unresponsive to the reports.

'€œI want to know why there are some people who are unresponsive to the reports. Maybe some are [technologically illiterate], while others are just lazy. I will demote those who are lazy,'€ Ahok said.

The city is currently conducting its first trimonthly evaluation of its echelon II, III and IV officials, and is set to demote underperforming officials. The city will then hold another open recruitment to replace demoted officials.

Ahok went on to say that he would give a pass to those who were technologically illiterate, but urged them to learn to use the application in order to better serve residents.

Separately, the Communication and Information Agency'€™s Smart City Jakarta unit head, Alberto Ali, revealed to The Jakarta Post that as of March, all 44 district heads used CROP while only 187 of the 267 subdistrict heads used the application.

Alberto said there were 30,000 Qlue users as of March and roughly 100 reports made daily, through the application itself or through smartcity.jakarta.go.id.

'€œHowever, only about 30 reports are handled each day. In most cases, it is because the problem cannot be handled right away, or the subdistrict heads are unable to respond because they don'€™t have the application,'€ he said over the phone on Thursday.

For example, he said, many residents request that the subdistrict fix a damaged road.

'€œThe officials cannot respond to this right away because there are several steps to take before the city can actually fix the roads. Therefore, it may take a while to respond to such complaints,'€ Alberto said.

He went on to say that users mostly complained about damaged roads, traffic congestion and waste.

Alberto said that through the application, the city administration was able to see which subdistrict was the most responsive and which was the least. The most responsive subdistricts are North Jakarta'€™s West Semper, South Jakarta'€™s Bangka and East Jakarta'€™s Pinang Ranti.

Meanwhile, the least responsive are West Jakarta'€™s Roa Malaka, Central Jakarta'€™s Kebon Kelapa and Pasar Baru.

In the application, subdistricts receive a point for each response, and another point for each action taken for the complaint. The fewer responses from subdistrict heads and their staffers, the fewer points they receive.

Alberto acknowledged that the city'€™s services through the application still needed improvement.

'€œWe first want to improve our services before introducing and promoting the application to a wider public. If we promote it with our current services, it would be a waste and residents would complain,'€ he said.