The Solution Architecture

And the solution was the introduction of an identity card, known as the e-KTP. This involved the enrollment of all 172 million citizens over a three-year period. There were problems in terms of establishing sufficient identity documents, sufficient levels of evidence to support the enrollment. But the e-KTP ultimately became the foundation identity card for Indonesia moving forward. But actually, the issuing of the e-KTP had a problem in its own right. We were relying on those documents that could easily be forged. The e-KTP tried to consider future technologies and embedded biometric data, including the fingerprint and iris template, and also facial geometry. Considering the huge population, the rollout was going to take some time.

The target was three years, and they had an issue rate of 8,000 IDs per day across 7,000 individual locations. Remember, we said there are 17,000 islands, we have 7,000 locations issuing these passes. So some of the challenges that were faced– firstly, cultural acceptance. The card required information regarding your religion to be included within the card’s profile, within the information that the card contained. And this was a sensitive point for some sections of the community.

Some parts of the government thought that this field should be optional; other areas felt that it should be mandated. Also, within Indonesia, there are 746 languages, and over 1,000 distinct ethnic groups. We mentioned the geographical issues. If we have 17,000 islands and only 7,000 issue points, then there’s an obvious problem there in terms of reaching every citizen within the country. There was also reported, in 2009, contractual fraud around the issuing of the contracts. This was a huge piece of work. It required significant investment. And as part of the process, there were press stories through 2009, 2010 regarding fraud within the contract process.

The constraints around time, three years to register 172 million citizens, became a problem. And at one point, there were 24-hour day registration processes running. Also, registration fraud. We mentioned that the actual registration of the e-KTP– the e-KTP is a strong document, but actually enrolling for that, we had the former national ID card, which was a far weaker form of nascent identity. So the foundations were weaker. The total cost was 600 million, which is a significant investment for a country. But it does provide for such a great foundation moving forward.