Exclusive: Jakarta to launch single government portal

Jakarta will this year launch a single portal for public services, following other governments in the region that are consolidating their digital services.

It will be an “integrated system for the whole of Jakarta”, Ellen Nio, the Smart City Unit’s Chief of Staff, exclusively revealed to GovInsider.

The portal will bring together all government services in one place, combining complaints with other services. The beta website will be launched in June and will be the first of its kind in Indonesia.

The service will also be available as an API so that citizens can build new apps using this. An API is an Application Programming Interface, a tool that allows other apps and services to automatically use data or functionalities from another app.

This will “allow other people to integrate different apps” with Jakarta’s single portal, so they can “compete in making the best systems”, Nio said. Elsewhere in the region, Malaysia and Thailand have announced also plans for a single portal, bringing together services from across agencies.

Both have started with a focus on helping businesses. Malaysia’s first move has been to create a proof of concept, integrating over 1,500 business licenses onto the portal this year.

In Thailand, the government hopes that all services for businesses will be on a single website, including registering new businesses, getting a tax number, and employing labor.

Other upcoming projects

Jakarta’s Smart City Unit, set up in January last year, plans to launch a single smart card for citizens to pay for public transport, road tolls, health insurance, and shopping. The card will have a chip with the citizen’s ID number, financial status and family card number to ensure that government subsidies reach those intended.

The unit will also use analytics to improve public transport routes. It will look at data on where people tap in and out of buses, suggesting new routes to bus operators where people currently have to transfer between multiple buses. And Jakarta will upgrade thousands of street lamps across the city to more energy efficient light bulbs, which can be monitored centrally by the Smart City Unit.