Our hearts broke when we heard the news that former Jakarta Development Planning Agency (Bappeda Jakarta) Head Atika Nur Rahmania passed away on Wednesday, 4 November 2026. She was 54 years old. Atika, best known to her colleagues and friends as Mami Tika, was a reformist figure we looked up to dearly at The Reformist editorial desk and, by extension, Think Policy.
She was what we usually call an “extraordinary insider” — a career bureaucrat who didn’t let rigid and complex bureaucracy stop her from striving for excellence and innovation, with profound empathy as her anchor.
Atika was “born-and-raised” (her own words) in Bappeda Jakarta as a public servant. She served the Jakarta government since 1998, starting in Bappeda, then spending a stint as Jakarta Communications and Informatics Agency Head in 2018 before returning to lead the agency that nurtured her in 2022. On her final day, she still attended the inauguration ceremony for a new Bappeda Jakarta employee cohort.
She was an optimistic leader with enduring dedication. Her love and dreams for Jakarta; her genuine trust that its citizens’ quality of life is worth fighting for by its bureaucrats were apparent in each conversation we had with her.
Last year, we had an earnest conversation with her in an episode of The Reformist Podcast, where she shared her fondness for Bappeda Jakarta, the work that she’d done in the agency, and her thoughts on being a reformist, pushing for changes from inside the system.
Our engagement with her started way before we recorded that podcast. Back in 2023, Think Policy was an infant, but Atika, as an ecosystem mover, trusted us and supported our early convening efforts. We keep doing what we do to this day partly thanks to her rare leadership trait: her trust in emerging voices and her “boundary-spanner” spirit, which always drove her to create an enabling environment for people with systems-thinking approaches.
Her visionary leadership was also embodied in her trust in collaboration. She believed that making Jakarta a great city needs a great deal of contributions from different actors. She trusted that working with non-government actors would help Jakarta’s development. Her message to us was: “Working on policy reforms needs not only evidence but also your heart.”
We keep her message in mind in all the work we do; then, now, and moving forward.
She was, in the words of our Chief Experiment Officer, Afu Utami, an ecosystem enabler and a champion of cross-sectoral collaboration.
While she championed collaboration profoundly, she also believed that good governance comes from, among other things, the competence of the bureaucrats, which we shared. In a keynote address at one of our bootcamps, Atika inspired local legislators from different cities by sharing the importance of effective, meaningful planning in building a city people love.
On our podcast, she also spoke about Jakarta’s digital transformation — perhaps most familiar to you is the province’s public service app JAKI — which became her legacy during her time at both the Jakarta Communications and Informatics Agency and Bappeda Jakarta. JAKI and the larger digital transformation reform were a testament to her unwavering work building a competent bureaucracy that outlasts any leadership change in the governor’s office.
Another part of our conversation with her will leave a bittersweet taste if you listen again now that she’s gone. She said Jakarta’s ambition to make the top 20 Global City list by 2045 would depend on how Bappeda Jakarta manages its resources, budget, and talent. Thus, before she left, she wanted to make sure the agency had a strong technocratic pillar.
“A legacy I want to create when I leave [Bappeda Jakarta] is that [making sure] this organization is being guarded by competent and reliable people.”
Everyone who has worked with and alongside her would all agree that her legacy is exactly that. And we will all carry it forward in her memory.
Our main mission in The Reformist is to unearth untold stories of reform and bring into light reformists who dare to dream big and strive for change despite complex challenges, narrow wiggle space, or rarely-opened policy windows. Perhaps there is no better embodiment of this than Atika Nur Rahmania.
Rest well, Mami Tika.