“Hacking” Bureaucracy Underpins the Success of Digital Service Delivery: GovTech Edu’s Policy & Transformation Team
When you think about digital & technology, a few things come to mind; data, code, product, design, you name it — but the policy is not usually one of them. For public sector innovations, though, the policy is the bedrock for ideas to take shape and take off. In leveraging technology to build better services for students, schools, and teachers nationwide, GovTech Edu works with the Ministry to help execute their innovative education policies.
But the scale of transformation that we aim for is far beyond policies and products — it’s a new way of working to create a culture ripe for building great digital government services. We need to build new bridges between tech and bureaucracy, but more than that, the initiative requires a transformation in how we do digital. This is where our Policy & Transformation team comes in.
Driving the non-digital of digital transformation
We asked a couple of people from the P&T team — what does the P&T Team do? We started with the Head of P&T GovTech Edu, Agung Hikmat, on where the P&T team fits in the initiative. “The team is here to help scale digital transformation and ensure the sustainability of these innovations within the Ministry, tending to the non-digital of digital transformation. What is as crucial to develop and operate good digital government services is tending to a buildup of what you can’t see within the tech or the applications, this can include policy roadmaps or organization of resources to execute policies and operationalize tech,” he said.
Adding to this, Carissa Temenggung, from the P&T team in the Sumber Daya Sekolah Tribe, explains that the team plays a role at the outset of an initiative, through product development, and then through product operations. “Early on, the team helps in getting the lay of the land of our counterparts, setting the tone of initial conversations, aligning visions and priorities, and establishing a sound feedback loop between the team and stakeholders,” she explains, “when the initiative is active, the team supports in a range of responsibilities from policy analysis and recommendations, stakeholder assistance in tech operational structures and procedures to help the Ministry in continued service delivery.”
Elaborating further, Carissa says that the wide range of responsibilities includes finding bureaucratic workarounds to help deliver initiatives on time. This also involves cementing new ways of working between the Ministry and GovTech Edu, enabling cross-functional coordination lines that paved the road for continuous collaboration and success that the Ministry has achieved.
Enabling data-informed school planning and policymaking
Lukman Edwindra, representing the P&T team at the Rapor Pendidikan Tribe, says one challenge for school administrators and teachers is planning resources to maximize students’ learning experiences. Through the Rapor Pendidikan initiative, the Ministry and Govtech Edu aimed to create user-based technology that can collect and process data to inform schools on how best to plan their resources. “The team was heavily involved in setting up the initiative by streamlining overlapping regulations & data streams, connecting the team with stakeholders, and setting up a governance framework to operate the initiative,” he explains, and adding, “but this work to lay the groundwork for Rapor Pendidikan is only the start to realize the potential of the initiative to create an end-to-end and seamless administrative system.”
He also notes that the Rapor Pendidikan initiative is aimed at our school users and our ministry counterparts. He adds that “the P&T team ensures that the technology can benefit stakeholders by enabling access to easy and readable data for better evidence-based policymaking.”
Assistance in delivering a cross-ministry and seamless budget planning experience for schools.
The P&T team also assists the Ministry of Education with technology initiatives that might be inter-ministry, too. Tasha Nastiti, from the Sumber Daya Sekolah Tribe, talks to us about assisting ideation and discussions between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Home Affairs to reach an alignment on overlapping applications. “Over 200.000+ schools in Indonesia are faced with mountains of administrative work and competing, mandated administrative applications between ministries. This redundancy took time and energy away from providing the best education possible to students nationwide,” Tasha said, “The Ministry led the discussion to find a middle ground that would allow overlapping technology to coexist in a way that is easier for schools.”
She elaborates that within six months of negotiations, both ministers signed a joint circular letter announcing the use of ARKAS as the sole user interface for schools. The application will be integrated with the Ministry of Home Affairs’ application. “The alignment minimized redundancy and paved the way for a new way of working that spans cross ministries,” she adds.
Aligning tech and program initiatives to drive teachers’ self-learning habits.
Teachers are the backbone of an education system, but their professional development is often not at the forefront. Gianina Amadira from the Guru Tribe talks about the feat of delivering quality professional development programs for 3+ million teachers spread across the country is no small feat through crafting accessible, bite-sized, high-quality online modules launched by the Pelatihan Mandiri feature (or Independent Training) in the Ministry’s keystone app, Platform Merdeka Mengajar (PMM).
“The solution of online courses is novel in teachers’ professional and personal development regulatory landscape,” Gianina explains. “The team looked to find a way to ensure that this new way of learning for teachers is equivalent to traditional, offline training and can be formally recognized as credit points contributing to a teacher’s professional development.” She elaborates further that through the team’s advocacy for solutions or workarounds to administrative constraints, PMM can now publish legitimate certificates that count toward a teacher’s credit points, enabling thousands of teachers nationwide to access diverse options of curated and quality learning modules in the comfort of their own homes, and through it, a chance to advance their career.
The team is also assisted with initiatives to create sustainable technology infrastructure to ensure the continuation of digital services for the Ministry. “We assisted our Ministry counterparts in the discussion to enact their policies on Satu Data and the Integrated Electronic-Based Government System,” Agung adds, “this paves the way for the Ministry to implement standardized, cutting-edge data and IT initiatives across the Ministry. To do that, the policies emphasize prudent governance across units within the Ministry, including assigning a CIO role to coordinate data and IT initiatives.”
Digital transformation is no small feat to tackle, and every win results from collaboration and alignment with all stakeholders and all aspects. To drive and aspire for continuous digital innovation in the public sector alongside the Ministry of Education, GovTech Edu keeps in mind the non-technology elements inherent in the sector. How we innovate, tread ground, build connections, and construct a working culture that can be precedent-setting to any digital service delivery initiative.
