Plain Ideas for Indonesia

Govt bureaucratic reform initiative stalling: Experts The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Wed, August 29 2012, 7:36 AM A- A A+ Paper Edition | Page: 4 Experts say that the government has made little progress, if any at all, in its efforts to reform the bureaucracy 14 years after the start of the reform movement. They also warned that nothing will have been achieved by the end of the year when the government’s two-year plan to accelerate bureaucratic reform expires. “The 1998 reform movement started 14 years ago but the bureaucratic reform has not run its course as it should have done. What we have now is far from good enough,” Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the head of the Presidential Working Unit for Supervision and Management of Development (UKP4) said on Tuesday. Kuntoro said that the complacency and inertia that especially plagued some ministries had contributed to the setback in the process of reform. “The fact of the matter is that some bureaucrats have stayed in thei...

In this article, Gatot recommends the easiest thing that can be implemented in the public sector reform without major investments in time and money, i.e. changing the mode of interaction with the public. One of the examples is when providing ID cards. It is recommended the process start by prompting citizens with ID cards about to expire one month in advance through a short message service (SMS), which can easily be supported by information technology.  Based on my knowledge, what is recommended by Gatot has been implemented by some local governments. Unfortunately, there is a problem in maintaining the system. One of the problem is local governments have to support the budget for sending SMS, which is not cheap. Finally, without enough budget, they close the SMS system. It means to make it success bureaucratic reform should be supported with broader reform, including public financial management reform. That is the reason why some foreign governments do not like to use the term o...

In June this year, I had a conference at Solo, East Java. At the same time, there was Batik Solo Carnival. There was a parade from sport stadium to the center of city. With the help of our friends, Ibu Eny, one of the major assistants, we sat at VIP area in the sport stadium. From this place, I took some pictures from the parade. I hope you enjoy it.

Some months ago I had an opportunity to visit Banda Aceh. I visited one the masque at Ulee-lhe, i.e. Mesjid-Baiturrahim. It is a historic building at Banda Aceh. It was one the masques that was not destroyed by Tsunami. It still can stand up firmly until now. However, this masque needs improvement in handling water circulation.  When we prayed at this masque, it was very difficult for us to find the water for cleaning our body before praying ( wudu ). I hope the local government could solve this problem.

One of the most difficult things in developing information system is defining the requirement. Usually, users do not understand how to define their requirements. Sometimes, they also do not know what is their problems. They only state that they need information technology to support their jobs. As a result, it is very important for us to formalize the requirements. IT developers should define the requirement first. There is a lot of approach in definining and formalizing the requirements. One of the approach is using software requirement spesicification (SRS) document. The document template could be downloaded from the internet. An example of the document could be accessed from this address https://services.brics.dk/java/courseadmin/SoITS/documents/getDocument/CafeteriaOrderingSystem.pdf?d=52680. If you understand use case diagram, it is better for you to use it when defining the functional diagram. You can use computer software or pen when making the diagram. After finishi...