Indonesia's incoming president Joko Widodo will need to move bureaucracy online across the world's largest archipelago to better tackle corruption, the country's financial crime agency said.
"What needs to be improved is that all transactions in the spending of local government budgets must be performed without cash," Agus Santoso, deputy chairman of the Indonesian Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center, or PPATK, said in an interview. "All procurement of goods and services should be done as much as possible using e-procurement, so that the potential for price markups can be minimised."
Santoso's push for increased scrutiny of government services was given impetus with news yesterday the country's anti-graft agency is investigating Mining and Energy Minister Jero Wacik, the most-senior figure to face a probe this year.
Widodo, known as Jokowi, moved budget procurement and tax collection online as governor of Jakarta, and has vowed to make national government services electronic. The challenge would be to bring greater transparency to processes outside the national sphere - licences for mines, plantations and infrastructure are often given out at provincial levels while the cost of local government contracts can be inflated as much as 500 per cent, according to Santoso.
Indonesia's move to decentralise government in 2001 has allowed politicians like Jokowi to rise from the local arena to national prominence, while creating scope for corruption that can deter foreign investment and siphon money as the government cuts spending on concerns about the budget deficit, targeted at a proposed 2.32 per cent of gross domestic product next year. There were 141 local bureaucrats tried last year on graft charges, according to non-government group Indonesia Corruption Watch.
Some local leaders may look to accumulate money to fund re-election campaigns, Santoso said. There will be over 200 elections next year for local leaders, who sometimes run offices without computers, said Andrew Thornley, Jakarta-based program director of elections at The Asia Foundation.
"There's no standard system for provision of information," said Thornley, who added local bureaucracies needed to become more transparent.
