Alright, those who complained regarding with Jakarta Smart City team and Jabar Digital Service, the government finally built an in-house design and development team for digitalization. Hooray! And now, let's see how existing government institutions are trying to become the Gojeks of their own. Before we convinced POLRI to have one. Case Study 1: JAKI (Jakarta Kini) JAKI was initially launched as almost looking like Gojek, with the exception of the top carousel that obscures the resemblance. Its purpose is well, to replace the existence of Qlue as endorsed by the previous mayor of Jakarta and to build an integrated Customer Response Management (CRM) and of course, a superapp. However, its initial days were plagued with one main issue: the need to install another app to access specific feature as advertised on the app, such as e-library. Well, this is definitely does not make JAKI a super-app. No. Instead, this makes JAKI to be yet another App Store of the provincial government of Jakarta. The good news is that these annoying things are finally removed for good, so all of these features: are now all available in-app (despite some are cheating with WebViews). Good job! Case Study 2: PeduliLindungi Ah, yes, the national COVID-19 contact tracing app wouldn't be made without "some" inspiration from Gojek. At the time of this writing, PeduliLindungi is capable of vaccine registration, vaccine certificate, travel permits, public area check-ins, and all the health-related information you need during the case of the pandemic. And they are currently expanding their plans to support beyond COVID-19, like child immunization and personal medication reminder tool. I can personally imagine if Gojek didn't exist. This gigantic app would be split into 5-10 individual apps, like the case of the Semarang government. Yeah, I mean this one: Like Semarang, there would be a dedicated app for contact tracing, a dedicated app for COVID-19 vaccination, another one for immunization, another one for e-HAC (health-based travel permits), and another one for public health information. Each of them is a dedicated CRUD service, so they could have been split according to the government's and tender winners' old mindset. Thinking beyond than just being "the Gojek of POLRI". Sure that, there are now many, many examples of government institutions are being "Gojek, but government official app for something and something and something" Like West Java's PIKOBAR, "PeduliLindungi, but for West Java and white and green", which PeduliLindungi itself is "Gojek, but for COVID-19 public management and white and blue". It's important for us, as well, that our main purpose of building POLRI Super App is not to be another "Gojek, but POLRI and dark blue". There's something that we would like to do more than that, but unfortunately, it's one of our trade secrets 🥲. But looking back at one of Gojek's own statement, A Super App is many apps within an umbrella app. It’s an Operating System that unbundles the tyranny of apps. It’s a portal to the internet for a mobile-first generation. https://www.gojek.io/superapp The true essence of a "super app" is not cloning the features of those famous apps who present a grid of features right on the front of the home page. Or to follow the "digitalization in the Industry 4.0 era" thing. No. But it's building an "operating system" that works on any operating system which unites the entire Police Force and the people to be collaboratively predictive, responsible, transparent in enforcing laws and honoring justice. Yep, precisely this one: "Works with any operating system?" Yeah, POLRI Super App still depend on Android and iOS, as well as Linux servers and Windows workstations used by the vast number of POLRI's individual regions, departments, and units. We are making a "meta operating system" that again, works on any operating system. You can look at Android, BlackBerry, GNOME, iOS, KDE, macOS, or Windows and see how integrated their system apps are. For example, your created Tasks or Reminders or To-Do can be shown in another app called Calendar. Or you can set up widgets so both your important tasks and events can be shown right on your desktop. When translated into the Indonesian government's digital services, we should make a system that combines existing CRUD services together, and not just that, allowing future POLRI app developers to integrate their CRUD services with us! Hence, we're not just building an app. We're not just building a meta-OS of our own. We're also responsible to build apps within an app, digital services within a digital service, integrated CRUDs within a CRUD. Who knows that we actually built a dedicated no-code platform, specifically designed for the Police Force? That's real, and the app is just the tip of the iceberg.

There are many, many reasons, varying from human resources, management, UI/UX design, testing, operations, maintenance and more. But the biggest problem of all is the government itself! And here are six main things which I've summarized from hundreds of today's government app issues. Reason 1: Rapid outsourcing instead of growing and fostering the development team. Take that 1-starred M-Paspor for example. If you asked, "where are the developers behind this app so I can blame them for things?" The only answer I can say is well, they may be gone after the app's finished. Many Indonesian government bodies have outsourced developers from software houses, often offering affordable prices. And unfortunately, many of them are only focused on releasing these apps quickly and economically, but not willing to maintain them in the long term. Because of course, once the contracts are over, they're no longer obligated to maintain the app. It's all back to the government who decided whether to start another contract with them, or find another software house to continue their project. Reason 2: "Digitalization is optional" for some, just like Depok City. I have to agree with Mr. Yudianto's "cherry-on-top" comments regarding these apps. Some regional governments just made these apps feel great just to fulfill promises from their leaders' campaigns during the last election. And even worse, in case that these apps are down, many still believe that they can still return to pen-and-paper administration. https://twitter.com/fransallen/status/1463410005193883648?t=Q762AphooYZMmTzptmv0EA&s=19 Even the government of Depok still require traditional signatures in this era of digitalization. Reason 3: Overbranding, juxtaposing "electronification", "digital transformation", and "digitally serving the millenial generation" too much. Of course, I have a few examples here, but let's learn from the case of Sukuk Apps which you can download today from App Store and Google Play. By the way, since Google Translate can't understand what "sukuk" is, it's all about Sharia-bound state obligation investment. The app contains so much jargon which I don't understand, assuming that I never learned about English before. Like a bunch of mixed Indonesian and English terms if I set my default language to Indonesian. Do I feel very Jaksel to you? Another issue worth pointing out is the "e", as in "madness". Those e-e-ification on the bottom app bar tabs are pretty scary. Like "e-Market" which I simply assume to be yet another e-commerce like Amazon and Tokopedia. Or "e-Survey" which allows me to create online forms just like what I can do in Google Forms and Typeform? Alright, Ministry of Monetary, I know you're promoting the electronification of your service. But this is not what should be done. Like, on that homepage, "Underlying ..."? What message would you like to deliver with that truncated text? Reason 4: Bureaucrazy and their conventional app development culture. It is important to note their bureaucrazy, not just bureaucracy, of planning the digitalization of their own services. Again, assuming that they thought they can still safely return to pen-and-paper administration, every Indonesian government apps and digital services are always made by third party developers, who are just lucky enough to win official tenders from central and local governments. Their motivation? Build apps ASAP so we can digitalize ASAP! Well, I know, some of you might complain, mentioning the efforts of Jakarta and West Java provincial governments today, where they finally recruit dedicated teams for making apps. That's the latter part of the story, though, as even today we are still seeing this toxic culture still ongoing even in one of the largest law enforcement and public safety government organization in Indonesia. But well, for the rest of the governments, here's what conventional digitalization commonly look like: The government never excels in tech. But they do in marketing and election campaigns.That's why it's right, Mr. Yudianto, "Quality Assurance" and "UI/UX Designers" (almost) have no home at their annual job offerings. Because they don't understand the importance of them. So each year, the government estimates the funds first under their annual revenue and expenses allocation plan (APBD/APBN). The government then opens several projects up for tender. Software houses apply as candidates. The government may or may not know how to select a good candidate. So they either picked up randomly, or look at each portfolio, or choose because there are some recommendation from their personnels, aka. "orang dalam", between the tender winner and the government. The government creates and gives contracts to the software house. And as many software houses do, they quickly agree. The government may have little or no understanding on how their outsourced project managers are doing well or worse. Especially because of (1), the government never excels in tech. That is why many project managers "tried all their best", meeting everything what the government do as written in contract, despite the latent lack of programmer's soft and hard skills. Project managers, often crushed with deadlines and frustration with the government itself, forcing every member to speed up their work. That's why, no wonder these programmers (and often designers) start to ignore quality for the sake of "rapid digitalization", as I can summarize. "As long as I can still get money from it, why not just stick with PHP?" Or CRUD? or just not innovating at all while repeating their average skills just for money? https://twitter.com/pr0ph0z/status/1424030988594675713?s=20&t=zdmVQDE_PFVD0OISaT3AkA https://twitter.com/cahyadi_es/status/1424036633553166339?s=20&t=zdmVQDE_PFVD0OISaT3AkA Once the project either meets the finish line or the deadline, the software house will definitely consider that the app is "done", despite all the issues and the crunch their workers have done. The government then spends lots of marketing energy. Be it another press conference, another news article mentioning "digital transformation", or whatever the government could enforce because they are the government. Months after release, users start to complain things to the government related to their apps. Government's response: "Thank you for your response, we will try to improve our app" despite the contract is no longer in place. When netizens declared war against the (performance and quality of) government apps, there's another group of netizens "defending the app". This article should have been released on July 2022, right during the press release of POLRI Super App, but I decided to hold that for so long because of the rise of these tweets: https://twitter.com/itstigatiga/status/1544305595309690881?s=20&t=zdmVQDE_PFVD0OISaT3AkA https://twitter.com/Raider49703334/status/1544324994532245504?s=20&t=zdmVQDE_PFVD0OISaT3AkA https://twitter.com/18kabar_NSTR/status/1544586041369038848?s=20&t=zdmVQDE_PFVD0OISaT3AkA And of course, because of this as well: Wait, I'm not done yet! The government ended up choosing one of the three possible options: Renegotiate with the tender winner to extend their contract, Or hold another tender and back to Step 3, Or hold the improvement project entirely due to financial issues, so they may continue at the next year(s) and return to Step 1. Fortunately, after the initial app release in July, POLRI decided to choose Option 1. At the time of this writing our team is still improving on things, including the depreciation of earlier PolisiKu and Digital Korlantas for the sake of POLRI Super App. Reason 5: The fight between tender winners. Tender winners also tend to compete with each other, too. And you guessed it, for winning more projects and money. Even during the first cases of COVID-19 entering Indonesia, governments and tender winners decided to declare a great war. No, not the great war of fighting the pandemic. But the great war of fighting to be the best, winning COVID-19 superapp in Indonesia. This is, no joke. There are competing tender winners working at about projects to build individual COVID-19 information, contact tracing, and public control apps in Indonesia. Long story short (from my own Twitter thread), there are at least 6 projects from unrelated teams: PeduliLindungi from the Telkom Indonesia group, Bersatu Lawan COVID-19 (BLC-19), in which many of their veterans are joining into POLRI Super App, 10 Rumah Aman from the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (KOMINFO), Jakarta Tanggap Corona and JAKI from the Jakarta Smart City (JSC) team, Pusat Informasi dan Koordinasi COVID-19 Jawa Barat (PIKOBAR) from Jabar Digital Service, aka. the JSC of the West Java Province, Heck, even the Surabaya City Government created an Android app ("Surabaya Lawan COVID", not released to Google Play Store) which is shortly discontinued. Did you understand what I mean? Indonesia's Regional Autonomy laws fragment the effectiveness of these apps. Some apps are only good for their region, only, while the first three apps seems to compete for unknown reason. And I've contributed to the BLC-19 project as well, I have to admit that, I "hacked" PeduliLindungi for the sake of BLC-19's plans for creating an integrated dashboard for governments. That includes dismantling the APK to extract all possible endpoints from the PeduliLindungi's servers, and because I've noticed that an earlier iOS version of the app contains an accessible network debugger - which I can finally get their API keys! Wait, didn't you get the joke? I've hacked the Indonesian government for the sake of the Indonesian government! Fast forward to today, and this competition still exists even after the POLRI Super App's launch. Digital Korlantas (an earlier Police Force app for traffic and driving license management) are still being marketed to the public today, even though that we're (yes, on behalf of the greater TIK POLRI team) planning to deprecate the app in favor of POLRI Super App. https://twitter.com/khunxwhite/status/1587815218796953601 Reason 6: And lastly, their long-standing "one app is only good for one CRUD service" principle. This principle, if I'm not mistaken, drives back to the days of Symbian and Java feature phones. They are limited in capacity and capabilities, so there's no such thing as "superapps" in their limited app ecosystem. The Indonesian government, or that tender winners, tend to bring this principle forward into the era of smartphones. Their minds weren't enlightened with the ways of superapps, or at least, "modular app ecosystems" like LINE with all their web-based mini-apps (before they finally grew up into a dedicated super app). This is why the Semarang government decided to do that. Wait, what again? This list of 40+ apps which even my friends at Semarang didn't knew they existed. And this is exactly what they did! There's an app to book tickets for events in Semarang (Semartix), there's another two to provide feedbacks to the city government (E-Pokir and Lapor Hendi), there's also one to let residents and visitors to join the Semarang Great Sale craze, and there's one for citizen administration (Dukcapil / Si D'nOK) and so on. Even though that most of these apps are no longer available in the Google Play Store. But today, do you even bother to free up more phone space just so you can install all of these apps to get "the best Semarang City experience" in your whole life? Yet I believe if apps like Gojek and Traveloka didn't exist today, the quality of Indonesian government apps will still remain the same.