How Australia and Indonesia are setting best-practice governance standards for digital PPPs
Edition #65 Public-private cooperation can be complicated, but the JAKI app and Cyber Shield program's successes are more than the sum of their technical parts...
In this guest post from James Balzer, interweave explores the successes of PPPs in Asia, notably through Jakarta’s JAKI app and the Australian government’s Cyber Shield program. Public-private cooperation can be difficult, James argues, and governments ought to be careful to avoid lock-in and participating in outdated procurement practices. But at their best - as with these two case studies - they can bring shared accountability, innovation and risk, ultimately delivering faster, stronger and more resilient digital services.
In an era characterized by unpredictable policy challenges, governments increasingly find themselves entangled in the complexities posed by escalating risks of pandemics, climate change, cyber insecurity, and geopolitical uncertainty. A VUCA world demands a more agile and forward-thinking approach from administrations and - as anyone who believes in the promise of digital government will tell you - strong digital capabilities can help deliver services as much as 74% faster and 95% cheaper than the alternative.
Behind government websites and service front-ends these efficiency gains often rely on the strength of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), which at their best leverage the combined strengths of the public and private sectors to deliver digital transformation. The added value of private sector actors boosting public sector capacity is well documented, with the Asian Development Bank pointing to the $4-6 billion saved annually through the use of PPPs in the Asia-Pacific.
Less broadly discussed are the benefits that go the other way: public sector investment can significantly boost private sector tech productivity by up to 45%, not to mention the policies and regulations that can make or break a business by defining the market rules and conditions within which they play.
If the benefits of strong PPPs in the digital space are fairly clear cut however, the conditions which facilitate the strength of these partnerships are less obvious. Governance arrangements and best-practice in PPPs are often scrutinized and debated, and there is a great deal of literature around how to maximize their value. These debates are largely academic, but the phenomenon they describe are often played out in contracts worth billions. In their recent book How Big Things Get Done, Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner developed a heuristic for major infrastructure project success, “make friends and keep them friendly”. A simple concept on paper, but a litany of major IT government failures tell a different story. Jakarta and Australia however, with the JAKI and Cyber Shield initiatives respectively, show how these partnerships can deliver successful projects, fomenting a delivery model built on shared accountability, innovation and risk.
Jakarta Kini (JAKI): Jakarta’s public-sector triumph on a private sector platform
In 2019, Jakarta Smart City organization - the group responsible for digitally supercharging Indonesia’s capital - launched Jakarta Kini (JAKI), a comprehensive digital platform and super-app designed to cater to citizen needs across a diverse range of government services. Leveraging advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, JAKI offers real-time insights on data collected throughout the city to enhance the lives of Jakarta residents. Since its soft launch in 2019, the app has successfully served almost 3 million users (from a total population of 11 million), addressing various sectors from health to education to social services. Through its increased efficiency, JAKI has also saved the city’s government USD ~14.5 million a year in that timeframe.
In many ways, the Jakarta Kini app is a triumph for the public sector, evidently creating more responsive and proactive public services. But behind this front-end, the app depends on the cutting-edge analytics platform of the SAS Institute, an American multinational analysis company. SAS has formed a broader strategic alliance with the Jakarta City Government, which beyond JAKI also includes in its scope supporting the city in its Digital Government Plan.
JAKI’s real-term impact was most evident during the COVID-19 crisis in Jakarta. The app offered a self-risk tool, mapping vaccination coverage and monitoring the prevalence of COVID-19 in specific areas. In future scenarios, its potential to rapidly scale-up support is clear too; its open API has democratized access to developers across Jakarta to modify the app, developing plug-ins and iterations to better suit user needs.
JAKI is “not just an app, but an ecosystem”, according to the OECD
Traditionally, governments have lacked the risk appetite to enable such flexibility and adaptability in service delivery. However, PPPs such as the development of the JAKI app highlight how commercial partners can offer adaptable innovation in leveraging evolving technologies. In this context, SAS’s PPP also allowed the government to mitigate an otherwise high risk, giving them more space to be driven by missions, outcomes, and the impact on the end user.
Before JAKI's launch, Jakarta's public records system was fragmented, with data scattered across silos and decision making difficult as a result. 56 departments across the city used separate applications for their public services, and citizens were required to download more than 100 apps for comprehensive access. interweave has previously covered how the Malaysian population was subject to excessive amounts of government apps - more than 200 of them. In this scenario, the administrative burden and poor user experiences affected trust in the Malaysian government, with the apps declared “the most redundant thing ever” on Twitter by users.
For Jakarta, these issues have been mitigated by the SAS Institute’s capacity to bridge data silos and aggregate large datasets, with data managed through a Master Data Management platform and stored by cloud computing services, promoting coherent data integration.
In many respects, the proof of JAKI’s success is in its longevity. 4 years on from the app’s launch, the SAS Institute has now expanded its collaboration with the government into actively contributing to Jakarta's Flood Control System, leveraging SAS Analytics for IoT on the JAKI platform. This system operates in real-time, predicting and monitoring at-risk areas to mitigate potential damage and enhance public awareness during disasters. By employing AI and machine learning, SAS's solution accelerates disaster response by swiftly processing large datasets, reducing data gathering time from an hour to just five minutes.
The Cyber-Shield Program: Australia’s partner in the era of cyber insecurity
Australia’s approach to PPPs has been quite different, co-opting the technical and upskilling capacity of one of the world’s biggest companies. When Canberra signed a groundbreaking $5 billion deal for a ‘Cyber Shield’ program with Microsoft a few months ago- the company's largest-ever investment in Australia - the move was immediately popular, with Home Affairs minister Clare O’Neil stating that the program would “mean that we won’t be alone or in our silos trying to manage this problem”.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announces the Microsoft Cyber Shield deal
Through the Cyber Shield initiative, Microsoft has begun working with the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to generate new opportunities in cloud computing, AI and quantum technologies in an era of digital insecurity.
There are some technological components to this partnership - for example, the expansion of Microsoft’s local data center footprint from 20 to 29 sites across Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney. But unlike the JAKI app, Microsoft has largely attempted to build digital infrastructure resilience through its people, with long-term capacity and skills building.
Perhaps most prescient here is the partnership to build a ‘Data Centre’ Academy through the New South Wales government’s Tertiary and Further Education (TAFE) system. The academy’s curriculum will train students for core operational roles relevant to any organizational cyber security objectives. These include data center technicians, critical environment specialists, inventory and asset management professionals, and IT operations personnel.
It is predicted that the academy will facilitate 200,000-250,000 trainees through in-person, structured learning and remote microcredential qualifications. Altogether, Microsoft’s global skills initiative will support more than 300,000 Australians in adjusting to cloud and AI-enabled skillsets.
Like the JAKI app, the Cyber Shield PPP’s effectiveness largely hinges on its ability to impart the private sector’s best-practice technical insights, while using the resourcing and convening power of government to distribute digital upskilling among Australians. To this end, also like the JAKI app, it is effective because of the risk and resource sharing between government and private sector actors; leveraging each others’ strengths and compensating for each others’ weaknesses.
Clearly, these digital PPPs are more than a sum of their technical parts. To advanced technologies, they also bring modern ways of working and an ability to absorb risk otherwise taken on entirely by governments. In engaging with the private sector, governments ought to be careful to avoid lock-in and participating in outdated procurement practices - Mike Bracken’s recent letter to the FT is enough of a warning as to why. But as equal partners, Jakarta and Australia are tangible examples of how PPPs can deliver value to governments, businesses and citizens alike.