This was revealed today by two speakers at the 2017 Asean Integrity Dialogue here: Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) director-general Mazlan Yusoff and Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK), Indonesia, deputy of prevention Pahala Nainggolan.

“Out of the 12,000 services the public sector provides, around 80% can be done online but today only a small portion is available through the internet,” Mazlan said.

“The more online you are, the more open and transparent the system will be.”

Meanwhile, Pahala said Indonesia had recently found that a lot of corruption was involved in the granting of licences for businesses.

“It’s petty corruption such as in order to get the public servant to do one task, you bribe him one or two dollars. But for us, any corruption is still an issue that needs to be addressed.

“And so Indonesia has made the service available online in order to stop these instances of corruption.”

He said so far, the system had been established in 23 out of 24 provinces and 380 districts out of 500.

However, the problem of connectivity remained as not everyone or every area had easy internet access.

“Currently, the service is running at 54%. What I mean by that is that if it were running at 100%, then the person applying for the licence could submit all the documents through the internet and there would be no need for any face-to-face interaction, which is what usually opens the gates to this petty corruption.”

He said another issue Indonesia found after shifting the service online was lengthy application times, with an application sometimes taking close to two months for processing.

“After two months, the applicant calls up the officers and one of the officers tells them to come to the office, and this again allows for petty corruption to take place.

“In order to address this, KPK’s idea is to provide several desks in the office so that the applicant can choose which officer to see.”