Jakarta. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo told his ministers on Monday to stop coming up with new apps in a bid to cut the bureaucratic red tape and put the brakes on further spending for the platform rollouts.

Indonesia already has 27,000 government apps as many government agencies tend to release new apps whenever there is a change in their top brass. The different apps even tend to work in silos, some are even overlapping with one another. The overabundance of apps can also get confusing for citizens when they interact with government services. As ministries go aggressive with the app rollout, the government is even planning to spend hundreds of millions of American dollars this year on new platforms, according to Jokowi.

“I have been telling [my ministers] to stop launching new apps starting this year, just stop. We already have 27,000 apps. This year alone, the government has allocated Rp 6.2 trillion [approximately $386.3 million] in spending to create new apps. One ministry can even have over 500 apps,” Jokowi said when launching INA Digital at Jakarta’s State Palace.

“They probably launched new apps whenever there was a change in minister or director-general. The same goes for the sub-national governments: ‘new governor, new app. The new agency head, new app’. Their [mindset] had always been project-oriented,” Jokowi said.

To this end, the country is launching “Govtech Indonesia” -- an initiative to merge all these public service apps in one portal called “INA Digital”.

The freshly launched INA Digital will initially focus on several priority public services, including healthcare, social assistance, and online driver’s license renewals, among others. In other words, people will be able to find a doctor and renew their driver’s license -- all using INA Digital.

“You can find services related to healthcare, education, business permits, taxation, and so on. … Migrating the data [from the existing apps] will take place in stages, but at least we have made our first step,” Jokowi said.

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