Jakarta. Home Affairs Minister Tito Karnavian said on Thursday that Indonesia would need to upgrade its civil registry data center as the country tries to adopt e-government based on the national ID numbers or locally known as the NIK.

According to Tito, the data center infrastructure at the Civil Registry Agency (Disdukcapil) has remained relatively the same since 2013. As the demand for NIK data grows, coupled with an expanding population, so does the need to upgrade the data center.

“Our e-government is based on NIK. If we wish to embrace digital government, we would need to have a strong 'backbone', but it is not strong enough today. We need a powerful bandwidth, enough storage, and server, as well as a secure system,” Tito said at an anti-corruption forum in Jakarta on Thursday.

“Our population is growing and many government bodies increasingly rely on the NIK data. Unfortunately, the budget for the civil registry keeps on shrinking,” Tito said.

The NIK is the unique serial number at the very top of an Indonesian identity card. The Finance Ministry is one of the many government bodies that is using the ID number data, according to Tito. 

The Finance Ministry is currently working on a single identification number scheme for taxpayers. By 2024, the NIK will entirely replace the tax identification cards (NPWP). 

Government data show that the civil registry directorate general has Rp 619.7 billion ($40.1 million) in the budget this year; higher than 2022 figures of Rp 603.7 billion. Between 2015 and 2023, the budget was the highest in 2017, during which it reached Rp 969 billion. Since then, the civil registry directorate general's budget began to drop and only saw an uptick in 2023.

The population, however, is always on the rise. In 2023, Indonesia’s population stood at around 277.7 million people, up from 275 million last year. 

Tito said he feared the low bandwidth and an outdated data center could slow down the system.

“I just want to make sure that there are no system failures if used as the backbone of the e-government. Now we know that all ministries and government bodies will use this NIK data. As well as the private sector. If the system fails, it will mess things up,” Tito said.

The government reported 2.9 billion accesses to NIK data last year. The regional government uses the NIK data the most, followed by payment services and banking institutions. In 2022, the civil registry agency recorded 199.78 million microchip-equipped, electronic identity cards.

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