While most apps these days are designed to make our lives more efficient, the Indonesian government has proved to be ironically inefficient with its software spending, as it sets out to delete thousands of obsolete apps.
According to Information and Communications Minister Johnny G. Plate, the government, through its various institutions, currently has an extremely bloated slate of 24,000 apps.
“But they’re not efficient. So we need to create government super apps that are more integrated and efficient — around eight to 10 of them,” Johnny said yesterday.
“The ministry is preparing a roadmap.”
Of course, Indonesia already has several of these so-called super apps that also perform administrative functions for the government, including, but not limited to, tax payment and COVID-19 mobility tracking. However, the most popular of these apps are privately developed.
Finance Minister Sri Mulyani added that the government has developed more than 400,000 apps, many of which serve singular functions.
“Imagine that. And each institution has 2,700 databases on their own,” she said.
The ministers did not provide an explanation as to how the government’s app count got so out of hand, only that it will work to downsize the list to just a handful apps.
