As part of their attempt to digitalize services and encourage more vehicle owners to pay their vehicle taxes, the Jakarta Police’s Vehicle Document Registration Center (Samsat) officially launched on Monday a new service called Digital Samsat.

With Digital Samsat, vehicle owners who want to pay their taxes need only enter their license plate number into a computer at a Samsat, prompting all information related to the vehicle and the owner to appear on screen.

Afterward, visitors are expected to print out and hand over an application to a Samsat officer, who would later call on them to make payments at a cashier.

Not long after, another officer would hand out a renewed vehicle ownership document or other vehicle documents.

Compared to the manual Samsat service, Digital Samsat is believed to be able to speed up the process of renewing documents, from 15 to 30 minutes to five minutes.

At the Samsat in South Jakarta on Monday morning, car owner Husein Azhari was expecting to wait in a long line. However, it took him less than five minutes to take care of business.

“Usually, the longest lines are at the bank [Bank DKI], where people line up to pay at the tellers,” said Husein, a resident of Bintaro, South Tangerang.

Another car owner, Lasmida Simanjuntak, looked confused after entering her data into a computer. A policewoman had to assist her in the process.

“There’s always something new that confuses me every time I visit Samsat to take care of my vehicle documents. But what can I do? As long as it is aimed for the greater good, I’ll just follow the rules,” she said.

South Jakarta Samsat chief Adj. Comr. Sugihartono explained to The Jakarta Post that in order to renew vehicle documents or pay vehicle taxes at Samsat, vehicle owners were only required to bring their vehicle, ID card, money for a vehicle registration fee and vehicle ownership documents.

“While previously people had to fill out the application form manually [using pen and paper], now they only need to input their license plate number into several designated computers at the Samsat lobby,” he said.

Sugihartono, noting that the South Jakarta Samsat could serve around 300 people in a day, said he hoped the new system would enable the center to eventually serve more than 500 people a day.

“I will keep deploying officers at the [Samsat] lobby for at least a year to assist visitors, until they are familiar with the new system,” he added.

Arip Budiman, also a car owner, said the changes the Jakarta Police made could not be referred to as a form of digitalization, because the new system still required vehicle owners to visit Samsat and deal with officers in person.

“You can call it ‘digital’ when vehicle owners like me can do everything using one machine only, from applying and paying to receiving the documents we need,” he said.

Arip, a resident of Pondok Gede, East Jakarta, typically uses the East Jakarta Samsat drive-through service. “The drive-through service is already good. But I think the Digital Samsat brought no significant changes,” he said.

During the Digital Samsat launch event at the Jakarta Police office on Monday, Governor Anies Baswedan said the city’s income from vehicle taxes in 2017 was around Rp 8 trillion (US$582 million), exceeding the year’s target of Rp 7.7 trillion. As of March 26 of this year, the city had collected 22.8 percent of taxes from all vehicle taxpayers.

“Through Digital Samsat, we’re optimistic that our income from the vehicle tax will increase this year,” he said. (vla)

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