Challenges of implementing new technology: The technical and the political
By Edwin Iskandar Dinazar
The author is a civil servant at the Directorate General of Customs and Excise of the Finance Ministry. This article is a winning submission to The Reformist Insiders Writing Competition 2026. It reflects the author’s own analysis and views and does not necessarily represent those of The Reformist.
This article is also available in Indonesian here.
“Perfection belongs only to God,” many people say. But at the Finance Ministry, perfection is one of the values we apply, translated into the principle of “continuous improvement.”
At the Echelon I level in Directorate General D, there is a foundational mindset instilled in employees: initiative, meaning the ability to solve problems and offer solutions without waiting for orders, and a corrective attitude, meaning the willingness to fix mistakes for the sake of meaningful change. It sounds like a cliché, but this is precisely what I have been trying to apply in my own unit, particularly when it comes to harnessing a new technology, let’s call it Technology U, to support one of our core duties.
In my unit, Directorate P, there is a running joke that the staff here are “illiterate,” in the sense that they work based on the experience passed down from senior to junior rather than by reading the regulations. And they are equally reluctant to commit that experience to writing. In recent years, this old habit has begun to be challenged, and I can say with some pride that I have been one of the people pushing against it.
Two dimensions of implementing technology challenges
When it comes to implementing new technology, of course, you cannot separate the political dimension, namely leadership support, from the technical dimension, such as procurement. On the matter of leadership support, many organizations adopt new things simply because a senior figure has decreed it, rather than as the result of careful study and data analysis. As for technical matters like procurement, collusion between unscrupulous officials and vendors often unfolds so smoothly that it begins to look like the natural state of affairs. The question is, how long can this go on?
Looking back a decade ago, I began writing about the use of Technology U while I was still on a study assignment. From class discussion papers and semester exam essays, it culminated in a thesis that now sits neatly on a shelf in the library of the official academy where I was studying.
When I returned to the office, I was given a mandate in a new unit, Directorate P, with the mission of bringing this idea to life, which turned out to align with the organization’s transformation blueprint. It was a major task, and I had no idea just how difficult it would prove to be.
Four years of sluggish progress
As I mentioned earlier, the political dimension looms large in the adoption of anything new, and my organization is no exception. Even though a study team had been formed and data were being collected continuously, when leadership simply ignored the work, even the best ideas only piled up in some forgotten corner of the organization.
From 2019 to 2023, for nearly four years, we crawled along at the pace of a garden snail. Until one moment changed everything: pressure from another unit within our ministry pricked the ego of our leadership. The Director, who had previously been indifferent, transformed overnight into a full supporter of the idea and demanded that we begin pilot implementation within a month. Even though we had to rush to finish the study, we eventually secured the Minister’s support as well.
The procurement battlefield
With the political side in hand, the technical challenges were already waiting for us.
Procurement in our unit, as it turned out, was not free from the grip of certain individuals who controlled vendor selection from behind the curtain. Among the dozen or so companies offering Technology U, we had to choose between vendors carrying foreign-brand products that were technically capable but threatened to blow our budget, or local pioneer companies whose prices were reasonable but whose specifications were riddled with limitations.
Fortunately, two local manufacturing companies offered a solution. They proposed using free-market components from abroad and assembling them according to our needs. We invited them to get creative, and then looked for the option that fit our budget. To make a long story short, one of the vendors, let’s call them PT Bravo, offered a package that met our requirements at a more competitive price than PT Foxtrot. At last, we had a sensible option for implementing Technology U in our unit. Logically, all PT Bravo had to do was submit their offer through the government-regulated e-catalog, and the decision maker within the ministry would select them.
The art of marking up price
Did things pan out as smoothly as my description? Of course not.
Life threw in a major plot twist near the end of the process with the sudden appearance of PT Alpha, which offered a product that was eighty percent identical to PT Bravo’s, at almost the same price. Only a few components distinguished the two offers. Even the brochure they posted on the e-catalog system was literally a copy of PT Bravo’s, with the logo cropped out and replaced by their own, along with their chosen components.
The absurd part is that PT Alpha had once submitted a proposal for Technology U at twice their current price, with one of the core components only slightly different. In their first proposal, the system they offered carried a component from a brand priced at Rp 1.9 billion. This time around, the difference was that they used an alternative component, the same brand PT Bravo was using, at only Rp 900 million.
Every other component was identical. In reality, when I checked the international market, both these components were priced in roughly the same range. Even more absurdly, when PT Alpha presented their offer to us, they pitched a completely different product, let’s call it Brand S from yet another country, priced at around Rp 5 billion.
Apparently, PT Alpha had a strong streak of mark-up running through their veins.
It sounds insane, but that was the reality. What made it more insane was that PT Alpha had often won tenders in our unit before, under various corporate identities all controlled by a single nuclear family. The father, the mother, and their two children each had their own company, and together they supplied a wide range of our unit’s needs.
You could say their character was that of a one-stop shop selling whatever the user happened to ask for. Worse still, several of my colleagues had dealt with goods procured from this strange constellation of entities, and every one of them rated the performance negatively: incomplete products, unqualified technicians, half-finished installations, even signs of contractual neglect. Yet remarkably, in administrative records, they were spotless. We were dealing with big-league players who had built a symbiotic relationship with corrupt insiders within our own organization.
A senior staff’s Hail Mary
Refusing to give up, my team and I, all of us in agreement that this rotten game had to end, set about comparing every component of the products offered by the two companies. The strangeness kept happening because every time we compared the solutions from PT Alpha and PT Bravo and identified weaknesses in PT Alpha’s components, their representatives would soon inform us that they had updated their proposal “with newer, more advanced components, at the same price.” After this happened three times, we became increasingly convinced that there was indeed a kind of “score-fixing” at work in this procurement.
Still undeterred, one of our seniors, who was fed up with these unhealthy procurement practices, handed us our ultimate weapon: the Presidential Regulation No.12/2021 on procurement. The regulation states explicitly that, beyond meeting the user’s needs, vendors must be prioritized based on their strengths in research, support for the creative economy, contribution to Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), and the product’s level of Domestic Component Content, known locally as TKDN.
Armed with this ammunition, the balance of the technical team’s discussion shifted in a way that could no longer be denied. Twelve members of the technical team could not reach a consensus until finally the team chair decided to put it to a vote.
Given the full set of facts laid out before us, it was clear that PT Bravo was decisively superior to PT Alpha, even without bringing up the potential for corruption, collusion, and nepotism, the negative track record, or the long list of other shortcomings on PT Alpha’s side. It came down simply to their inability to meet the criteria spelled out in the Presidential Regulation. The vote reflected exactly that. PT Bravo won decisively, nine votes to three.
A long way to go
Did the drama end there? Of course not. PT Bravo still had to prove that its product could live up to expectations. Our staff, the user team that had been trained, had to be ready to demonstrate their capability. Internal regulations on the use of this technology, the sustainability of its operations, and a long list of other unfinished homework were all still waiting for us.
But for now, we have offered some proof that the implementation of new technology and procurement grounded in data can still happen, even amid the stigma that adoption depends on political backing and that government procurement is often clouded by corruption, collusion, and nepotism.