UK and Indonesia team up to bridge startups and government problem-solving

Artificial intelligence (AI) projects in the public sector tend to end up as tech demonstrations, culminating in one-off events rather than impacting real-world operations. 

Once the pilot phase is over, solutions often lose both institutional ownership and a clear route to implementation. 

Through the AI Incubation for Public Sector programme, the British Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia and its local partners are seeking to address this challenge by connecting innovations with practical challenges faced by governments. 

“Many pilots fail not because the technology is flawed, but because there is no bridge between proof-of-concept and institutional adoption,” says the British Embassy Jakarta’s Head of Economics and Social Affairs, Samuel Hayes, to GovInsider. 

According to Hayes, the programme differs from conventional hackathons or innovation competitions that focus primarily on generating ideas and prototypes.

Instead, it was designed with implementation in mind from the outset, aiming to develop AI solutions to tackle public sector challenges. 

Launched by the Digital Access Programme (DAP) UK-Indonesia Tech Hub at the British Embassy Jakarta in partnership with AMANA Solutions, the programme brings together ministries, government agencies, innovators, and tech partners. 

The programme opened applications in May 2026, and has now entered its pitching phase. 

The five shortlisted teams will go through a three-month mentoring and piloting process before presenting their results at a Demo Day scheduled for August. 

Problem-first, not solution-first 

“Innovators do not arrive with solutions in search of a problem,” says Hayes.

Instead, ministries and government agencies serve as problem owners to identify real operational challenges from the start.  

This allows every solution developed to be grounded in genuine policy needs and practical contexts. 

Hayes highlights the programme’s emphasis on learning and implementation of evidence. Each team is required to document its testing process, including both successes and setbacks encountered during incubation. 

“This enables solutions to be communicated credibly to policymakers and prospective partners, rather than presented as a pitch deck,” he says. 

Beyond developing AI solutions, the programme is designed to be replicated and scaled.  

Its output includes a playbook and policy briefs that can guide similar programmes in other sectors and regions. Participating innovators can shape an early model for incubation-based AI governance in Indonesia, he says. 

During the incubation process, innovators will develop solutions using real government data within a secure testing environment.  

Participants will also receive cloud infrastructure support and technical mentoring from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other programme partners. 

GovInsider previously covered similar initiatives in the Netherlands and Ukraine, where startups are matched with public agencies to work on developing solutions for specific challenges. 

Five government priority challenges 

According to Hayes, the programme focuses on five use cases derived from a series of consultations and workshops conducted with the relevant ministries and government agencies.

“The primary considerations were alignment with national development priorities, clear benefits to the effectiveness of public services, and technical readiness alongside the commitment of the relevant agencies to adopt the solutions.”  

Based on these criteria, five challenges have been selected from the education, investment, public finance, healthcare, and national development planning sectors. 

The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (Kemendikdasmen) aims to use AI to analyse thousands of school reports, ensuring that education funding is allocated more accurately according to classroom-level needs. 

The Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) aims to develop an AI-powered matching system that connects foreign investors with investment-ready project listed on the Indonesia Investment Map (PIR) platform. The system is intended to integrate financial, regulatory, and technical assesments, making it easier for investors to identify suitable opportunities. 

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance expects to use AI to strengthen how it monitors and evaluates spending, addressing the challenge in comparing expenditure data held across multiple systems in different formats. 

The national health insurance agency, BPJS Kesehatan, plans to use AI to detect anomalies among the thousands of hospital claims it receives every day, enabling auditors to focus on high-risk cases. 

Meanwhile, the Ministry of National Development Planning (Bappenas) wants to standardise development metadata across ministries and agencies to strengthen more data-driven and up-to-date planning. 

Government agencies as active partners 

Rather than acting merely as advisers or judges, ministries and government agencies are actively involved throughout the incubation process. 

By involving government agencies from the outset, questions around ownership, governance, and operational responsibility are resolved well before a solution reaches the implementation stage.

“Each solution is developed with the problem-owning agency, allowing early assessment of whether it can be financed and procured within government systems,” he explains. 

He pointed to the Ministry of Finance’s effort to build an AI tool for comparing national and regional budget data, then stress-testing it against the full scale of Indonesia's fiscal reality. 

That pressure forces the development teams to consider infrastructure requirements, integration costs, and long-term sustainability from the earliest stages. 

BPJS Kesehatan's use case follows the same logic, where anomaly detection tools are tested directly within the claims management process, making it clear from the start which unit would be responsible for operating and maintaining the system once adopted. 

Hayes highlights that approaches like these help avoid a common outcome for pilot projects: solutions that have no institutional “home” once the pilot ends. 

For the programme organisers, success will be measured not simply by the number of prototypes produced, but by governance, implementation evidence, adoption, and ultimately by whether the initiative helps build long-term digital capability across Indonesia’s public sector. 

“This initiative reflects a shared commitment under the UK-Indonesia Strategic Partnership to ensure that AI is deployed responsibly and delivers clear public value,” Hayes concludes.