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BUILDING BANDUNG DIGITAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATICS REFORM PLAN

Civic Analytics and Urban Intelligence Hanfie Vandanu [email protected]

BANDUNG, JAWA BARAT INDONESIA

Since the 2010s, cities have focused on smart cities development in Indonesia. Many local governments have been trying to adapt and utilize the digital solution to help serve their citizen. Bandung city is one of the cities actively launching digital services through its agency. Yet, Bandung's department of information of technology has not been able to adapt to the required changes to accommodate the faster technology and data-based initiatives.

The city has not followed the new needs of the smart city initiative to transform its organizational structure to accommodate a more fast, quick response to change and iterative development. Current structure and people formation has been a challenge for Bandung city to adapt quickly. Reform action is needed to improve city performance on delivering technology solutions.

The Bandung Digital Service Master Plan is a vision for Bandung's digital reform. It tackles today's challenges of mishandling of technological practices within the administration. The master plan is written to prepare the government to utilize the technology to help serve citizens better. It will showcase the current issue and opportunity to resolve it and show the strategy that can be implemented for Bandung’s digital transition.

E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y

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Currently, most digital products and services of Bandung city are being handled through the procurement process by hiring IT vendors to develop a product. The current organizational structure and talent formation in the informatics department of Bandung city is not ready for a quicker technology and data-based product and services development.

The present talent structure is more dedicated to informatics policy development than products and services development. Existing products and services provided by the government are not maintained, many display outdated information. Some of them also have low-quality and fragmented products. The current structure and process are not ideal for the city to move forward.

There is a need to reform the current organization and talent structure within the Bandung city informatics department. This reform is needed so that the administration can utilize the technology to serve the citizen effectively and efficiently.

THE STATE OF Bandung City Administration’s Technology Ecosystem

About: Organization – Department of Communication and Informatics

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Bandung City Communication and Informatics Agency Organization Chart

The government of Bandung consists of 34 agencies and 12 departments. Currently, the body responsible for all technology deployment in Bandung city is the Department of Communication and Informatics.

Department of Communication and Informatics' core function is to regulate informatics policy in the City. However, as technology and the smart city concept develop, it becomes an integral part of the City's decision-making and the primary tool to use the latest technology to serve citizens.

Each agency is currently handling the deployment of tech products and services in Bandung with a consultation with the department of communication and informatics. Many agencies have already deployed their products and services. But the process is not standardized, making this products/services building process inefficient and not maintained properly.

To better understand the condition of Bandung City's technological challenges, the writer conducted interviews with former staff for Mayor of Bandung. The latter has been working on a digital strategy previously implemented in Bandung City and knows the current administrative structure's problem. Several points been made, and these findings can be divided into several focus category:

FINDINGS + OPPORTUNITIES

BUSINESS PROCESS

TALENTS

FINDINGS OPPORTUNITIES

Current process slowing down innovation and response.

The rigid structure of government is required for accountability. However, it might slow down the opportunity to innovate. The long process to coordinate and the requirements of permits to release data are giving disincentive for those who want to innovate within the administration.

Establish a new business process to accelerate innovation and government response

There are several framework and study to address this issue. One of them that can be implemented is the agile methodology—initially made for a software development environment. Agile can be used within a government environment to adapt and address a problem quickly, iteratively within a loop of feedback to improve the response of a problem.

Inexperience, more on policy-oriented team rather than technical one.

Many of the staff within the agency are specialized in policy development for informatics and technology. As technology has become an integral part, building a dedicated IT team become necessary.

Value saving for the cost of talent acquisition compared with hiring IT vendors

Hiring a capable technical team can save time and the cost of the government. It might look costly at first, but the investment of hiring the right people will impact the performance of deliverables and services that will be provided to the citizens.

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STANDARDS

DATA INFRASTRUCTURE & CITY APPLICATION

Lack of standard, low quality of code.

There is no software building standard and guideline that IT vendors can use during product development. Building products and services without standards and guidelines can cause several issues. Salesforce stated the importance of having a standard in software development is to avoid inconsistent code that might be leading to security vulnerabilities, performance issues, inconsistent user experience, and other issues such as the code becoming difficult and expensive to maintain.

Issues with deployed application

Some applications deployed in Bandung are currently inaccessible, neglected, and redundant. This shows inefficiency and a lack of planning. There is no capable maintainer with the required technical skills to maintain the complex apps already built for the city.

Developing a standard to streamline all digital products and services in Bandung City

Creating a standard to look up for both code and design will help the government have good quality apps with consistent looks and feel that will help the citizens. It will also be easier and have a lower cost to maintain.

Build a management team that will maintain, update, and manage city’s application and data infrastructure.

The team will be responsible and focused on managing all the city's applications. So, it can be updated and fixed quickly when things go wrong. The in-house team will also have a better insight into the limitation of the city and formulate a solution that the city can build later

ORGANIZATION

Data Silo caused by structure, culture, and slow procedure

Talend’s Knowledge Center defines a data silo as a collection of data held by one group that is not quickly or thoroughly accessible by other groups in the same organization. The currently closed organization structure is nurturing the development of data silos in the government.

Introducing a new culture and framework to improve data sharing and interoperability

There are several approaches to address data silos from forming in the organization, such as simplifying the organizational structure, reforming the organization culture that incentivizes data sharing and openness between groups, and introducing tools to make data sharing between groups in the organization more manageable.

FINDING OPPORTUNITIES

Closing Culture Gap To address the culture clash that might have happened due to the conservative and responsive contrast. One of the most critical roles in this transition plan is to bridge the culture gap. Several ways can be done, such as setting expectations, hiring an external consultant to guide the administration, monitoring and evaluation during the process, and catching feedback to learn what works and what to improve to achieve the goals.

Simplifying Organization Structure The complexity of organizational structure is making coordination is more complicated. Besides simplifying, the organization might also experiment with another form of coordination such as holacracy, a decentralized management and governance method that distributes authority and decision-making process. They might test it in smaller scope to see if it is working, then expands it further.

Talent Acquisition and Capacity Building Bringing high-quality technical talents to fill the product development function in the administration. The department can also train the current staff and upgrade their skills to work on the new culture and skillset required to build and maintain their product.

STRATEGY

ORGANIZATION REFORM

Business Process Reform Simplifying and streamlining the process to build digital products and services. By shortening the process and removing obstacles to incentivize the department's innovation.

Procurement Process Reform Highlighted by the Deloitte report on Agile Government transformation. The government can accelerate the procurement process through digitalization to acquire technology as needed. Reforming the procurement process, especially for digital programs, can help city administrations be more responsive to handling unexpected problems.

Example: India’s government can reduce procurement process time due to covid-19 emergency by introducing a e-portal for item purchases.

A. Data Strategy This covers data infrastructure, data collecting and cleaning process, and building standards to enable interoperability between agencies in Bandung City (e.g., tourism data, fire department data. Etc.)

Data Management Different agencies and departments in the city have other formats and standards. Data management will be essential to standardize the data and keep it to be easy to be utilized by different agencies when needed.

Data Access Having access to data library from multiple agencies will help to gain new insight that previously undiscovered.

Example: by having access to data from spatial planning department and public works department. The city’s investment agency can map the investment potential of the city by considering the city’s infrastructure and spatial plan.

Geospatial data Infrastructure Not only tabular or statistics data, having a proper geospatial data infrastructure is essential to visualize the findings. It will be helping the decision-maker to understand precisely where an intervention/policy making is needed.

STRATEGY

BUILDING STANDARD AND GUIDELINES

Metadata It is important to have organized and complete metadata as it connects two or more separate datasets to create meaningful information. Having robust metadata will help the data used to find which data can be used later in product/insight development.

Public Access for Public Collaboration and Hackathon Challenges After having completed data infrastructure, another way to utilize the data and gain new insights is by encouraging the public to crowdsource and see the innovation that can be made from the available data.

B. Guidelines Covers the guidelines for data sharing and design system

Data Sharing To help building a better solution, data sharing is essential. A guideline to ensure the data created within the government environment is critical to ensure data silos will not form in a department.

Design System Building a design system will help the government make recognizable, accessible, and mobile-friendly government products and services that work and feel similar across agencies.

Example: U.S. Federal Government under U.S digital services has an official U.S Web Design System (USWDS) designsystem. digital.gov to make it easier to build accessible and user-friendly government websites.

C. City Application

Single Sign On Single sign on is a technology that will help to organize multiple website login into a single account. By centralizing all products and services login details in a single account it will be easier to maintain.

Example: U.S government has its own SSO provider called login.gov. It provides a simple, secure, and private way for the public to access government website.

Centralized on main website (public facing) Building a central portal to list all government services across agency will help to showcase all the services the city government provide in a single place.

Example: NYC official homepage is listing all their resources on the homepage such as, service status, NYC 311 problem report, and upcoming city events.

STRATEGY

BUILDING STANDARD AND GUIDELINES

Maintainer, Deployment and Monitoring Having a dedicated team to maintain all the applications within the government is essential. To make sure if there is any issue occurred, it can be addressed quickly

Data API + Open Access Building a proper open data portal that can communicate with other applications through API is vital to promote and accelerate civic innovation that is brought by academia and general citizen.

CONCLUSION To implement technology solution for Bandung City, decision maker should be ready to accommodate the infrastructure, talents, guidelines among other things. As the end goals cannot be achieved through shortcut by using third-party IT vendors procurement. In a long run the investment will be benefited the government and the citizen in general.

Even though moving agile in the government sector is considered not compatible with the nature of stability public sector, the element of collaboration, adaptation, and iterative review will bring improvement to this sector.

By building Bandung Digital Service, the administration can oversee, synergize the technology solution that will be implemented in Bandung City. They will be able to react responsively, maintain the technology, building a positive culture of innovation both inside the government and amongst its citizen and academia.

REFERENCE

Advice on Running a Government Agency Like a Startup, from SomeoneWho’s Tried It https://hbr.org/2017/04/advice-on-running-a-government-agency-like-a-startup-from-someone- whos-tried-it

Salesforce Development Standards https://architect.salesforce.com/deliver/release-management-templates/development-standards/

What are data silos https://www.talend.com/resources/what-are-data-silos/

Bandung City Official Website https://bandung.go.id/

Bandung Department of Communication and Informatics Official Website https://diskominfo.bandung.go.id/

12 Principles behind the agile manifesto https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-the-agile-manifesto/

Holacracy https://www.holacracy.org/explore

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