TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsIndonesia's largest AI experiment barely has safety net
When the National Economic Council head announces that artificial intelligence is now "cleaning" the personal data of 270 million Indonesians across eight government ministries – and delivers that news as a triumph rather than a warning – something has gone badly wrong with how we communicate risk to the public.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
The construction of Digital Edge Indonesia data center in Cikarang, West Java is underway in this undated picture. State power producer PT PLN is set to supply 2x725 megavolts of electricity to support the operation of the country’s largest data center. (Antara/PT PLN)
N
ational Economic Council (DEN) head Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan has confirmed that since June 1, Indonesia's GovTech platform has achieved 80 percent connectivity across eight ministries and agencies, integrating their data into a single artificial intelligence-powered system for the first time in the country’s history.
He demonstrated facial recognition technology that reportedly resolved data disputes "in less than one minute", spoke of reaching 64 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and promised a nationwide rollout across all 514 regencies and cities by October of this year.
It all sounded remarkably impressive, but he failed to mention who will bear responsibility if something goes wrong - because right now, the honest legal answer is no one.
Let us begin with the most basic question of democratic governance: Who is actually in charge? The GovTech initiative is championed by the DEN, an advisory body to the President that possesses no operational authority over ministries, no legal mandate over data systems and no formal accountability mechanism under the law.
The underlying data systems sit scattered across a labyrinth of separate entities - ranging from social insurance provider BPJS and the Population and Civil Registry Office (Dukcapil) to the Finance Ministry - each bound to its own independent chain of command. Meanwhile, the AI infrastructure presumably involves the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN), Communication and Digital Affairs Ministry and National Innovation and Research Agency (BRIN), though these relationships have never been publicly or legally clarified.
This accountability vacuum is not a mere bureaucratic technicality; it is a structural failure with dangerous precedents. When the Temporary National Data Center (PDNS) was devastated by the Brain Cipher ransomware attack in June 2024 - compromising data across more than 200 government institutions and paralyzing critical public services for days - not a single ministry or agency was held legally responsible. The Information Ministry blamed the tenant institutions, BSSN evaded accountability, while tenants argued they had no choice but to store data in a system they did not control.
Now, Indonesia is building an architecture 10 times larger, while the fundamental question of legal ownership remains unanswered.
