As President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo prepares to replace government jobs with artificial intelligence (AI) to cut red tape amid a big push for investment and bureaucratic reform, observers have raised concerns about the availability of reliable and secure public data.

Jokowi said on Thursday the government would replace echelon III and IV officials with AI to speed up the government’s work. The legal umbrella for such a plan would be put forward as part of an omnibus bill that would eliminate inefficient regulations and bureaucracy.

“I have instructed ministers to replace echelon III and IV officials with AI [because] our bureaucracy will be faster with AI, but it will depend on the omnibus bill,” the President told business leaders attending the Kompas100 CEO Forum in Jakarta.

The omnibus bill, which would synchronize more than 70 overlapping laws and regulations deemed as unfavorable for investors, is expected to turn Indonesia into a more attractive investment destination as the government pushes efforts to boost sluggish economic growth.

Jokowi said the current echelon tiers would be reduced next year. There are currently 440,029 civil servants in echelon III, IV and V, representing 95 percent of the overall 460,067 government workforce, according to data from the National Civil Service Agency, as per June.

The government would push to maximize the effectiveness of online single submission (OSS) and the one map policy as part of its early-stage adoption of AI in civil service work, said Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto.

“We will use AI […] for example by simplifying [the process of issuing] building permits and connect it with the OSS to reduce [human] intervention,” Airlangga said in the same business forum as Jokowi. “We will also push to provide simplicity for small and medium businesses in the licensing process.”

The efforts are aimed at simplifying and expediting business processes in Indonesia, where economic growth slowed to 5.02 percent in the third quarter this year, the weakest in more than two years, with lackluster investment. Investment growth stood at 4.21 percent in the third quarter, compared with 6.96 percent in the same period last year, Statistics Indonesia data show.

The shift toward the automation of work has been sweeping around the world, although more often in the private sector to reduce costs. Singapore and Japan have been in the forefront of applying AI in government. The Emma chatbot in the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, for instance, handles more than 1 million immigration queries per month in English and Spanish.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers Indonesia digital services coleader Subianto told The Jakarta Post that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had “done very well in AI implementation” by focusing the technology on several sectors such as transportation, education and energy.

“The UAE has created a comprehensive national strategy with a clear target of reducing 50 percent of its annual costs using artificial intelligence,” he said.

Indonesia, meanwhile, is still at the initial stage of implementing information and technology platforms to capture data.

“For implementing AI, the availability of quality data is a prerequisite,” said Subianto. “There is tremendous potential for AI implementation in government services such as facial recognition-based subsidy approvals, advanced early-warning systems for natural disasters and business licensing."

A McKinsey & Company report entitled Automation and the Future of Work in Indonesia found that 23 million jobs could be displaced by automation by 2030, but 27 million to 46 million new jobs could be created in the same period if Indonesians learn new skills.

Many observers have raised concerns over the readiness of Indonesian workers for the age of automation, AI and machine learning, as employers complain of a deeply rooted skills gap.

Institute for Development of Economics and Finance economist Berly Martawardaya told the Post that in order for the government to implement AI in the civil service it needed to work out its data-reliability issues.

“The government should work on synchronizing ministries’ data in a bid to make the bureaucracy and public service more efficient,” said Berly, citing contradictions in data among various ministries that have hampered better public service provision and decision-making.

McKinsey’s partners’ note on entitled “When governments turn to AI: Algorithms, trade-offs and trust” cited concerns about the privacy, integrity and vulnerability of data.

“For example, can the algorithm be ‘hacked’ to reverse engineer specific data that should remain private? Does the data needed to build algorithms invade people’s privacy? Each of these are important considerations when deploying AI or machine-learning solutions,” the note reads.

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