Nezar Patria Gives Agencies Until Year-End to Find One Service AI Can Cut From Weeks to Days
Indonesia’s Deputy Minister of Communication and Digital Affairs Nezar Patria has challenged every government agency to identify at least one public service where artificial intelligence can cut waiting times from weeks to days before the end of the fourth quarter of 2026, Batam Today reported.
Speaking online from Central Jakarta on Friday, October 30, at a training session titled AI Value Chain: Indonesia’s Strategy in the AI Supply Chain as a Middle Power, Nezar said AI in government must produce visible change in the speed and quality of service, not simply follow technology trends. He pointed to document processing, licensing, civil administration and regulatory compliance checks as areas with potential. Agencies that hold back risk falling behind institutions that move ahead, he said, adding that private firms using AI could end up handling paperwork and permits faster than the government offices that hold the authority. Not adopting AI, he said, is not a reasonable option but a decision to go backwards.
He also argued that strategy documents and roadmaps are not enough without hands-on experience, saying a real understanding of strategy comes from actual use rather than from policy papers.
What it means in practice
The push for speed came with a caution. In remarks carried by Tempo from the state news agency Antara, Nezar said agentic AI given authority to act and decide in banking could have fatal consequences if it makes an error, potentially causing large losses or systemic disruption, while glitches or misdiagnoses in healthcare directly endanger lives and expose sensitive patient data. For now Indonesia relies on the Electronic Information and Transactions Law and Law No. 27 of 2022 on Personal Data Protection, while the government prepares a national AI roadmap and ethics guidelines, the same work behind Komdigi’s draft presidential rules on the AI roadmap and ethics. Health regulators have taken a similar line, as when the Kemenkes sandbox cleared 11 health innovators while Komdigi stressed human oversight.
With the deadline only weeks away, what to watch is whether ministries and regional governments publish the services they choose, how waiting times are measured before and after, and whether any of the new tools hand decisions to AI agents without the human checks Nezar himself has called for.