Managing Complaints and Improving Public Services in Indonesia

01 October 2015

A high-level meeting was held on September 29^th at the State Secretariat in an effort to encourage government institutions to commit to working with communities on handling complaints regarding public services.

The meeting was attended by staff from the President’s office, the Ministry for State Apparatus and Bureaucratic Reform (KemenPAN-RB), and the Ombudsman. Speakers included the Deputy Chief of the Executive Office of the President, Deputy for Public Services, KemenPAN-RB, Deputy for Public Complaints, Ombudsman Commissioner, staff of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, the Ministry of Agriculture and BPJS Health.

The meeting provided attendees with a forum to discuss and address key issues surrounding the handling of public complaints, challenges and opportunities faced, next steps in optimizing the complaint handling mechanism as well as lessons learned by LAPOR! management.

The National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K) has been actively involved in the management of complaints related to poverty reduction, both directly and through LAPOR!. TNP2K has established a special team to address complaints related to programmes such as the Social Protection Card (KPS), Family Welfare Card (KKS), National Health Insurance (JKN), Productive Family Savings Cards (PSKS), Rice for the Poor (RASKIN), and the Smart Indonesia Programme (PIP). LAPOR! is designed to work off of social media, and is in principle meant to be simple and integrated. LAPOR! offers a number of channels through which members of the public can convey their grievances about public services. These channels include a website (www.lapor.go.id), SMS (1708), android and blackberry applications, twitter (@LAPOR1708) and facebook (LAPOR!) accounts.

With an integrated system based on the principle of ‘no wrong door’, LAPOR! currently connects 81 ministries/institutions and 44 state-owned enterprises. Each report submitted via LAPOR! is referred directly to the relevant institution and progress on grievance redress can be monitored interactively. LAPOR! is based on the government’s commitment to maintaining transparency and accountability in handling public complaints, and allows for public monitoring and evaluation of the government’s performance. The collaboration between the government and the public is expected to actualize good governance.