OpenGov spoke to Mr. Iwan Djuniardi, Director Transformation Technology, Communication and Information, Directorate of General Tax / Ministry of Finance, Indonesia following our discussion on cyber security. He told us about what their main goals are for the coming year and why information security is so crucial to the tax body.
Digital Transformation
Speaking on how the organisation has approached this era of digital transformation, Mr. Iwan Djuniardi stated, “We have already improved our infrastructure and are looking at innovations such as mobile applications, cloud computing, big data analytics, and social business.” This is in line with how citizens are also adapting to this new era.
Within the Directorate of General Tax, the IT budget is fairly small compared to their fellow cohorts in other countries. Like all limited budgets, Mr. Iwan Djuniardi must use innovation to convince higher authorities of the benefits of change and technology adoption. He noted that his key argument will be that, technology will help reduce costs and labour.
More than 50,000 connected devices are linked to the Directorate of General Tax, Mr. Iwan Djuniardi stated. That means that less people will be manually filing their taxes in the future.
As for now, around 2 million people are digitally filing their taxes to the Directorate of General Tax. When more people are connected to their system, the organisation will have to adapt to the growing demand for mobile access to tax filing.
Information Security
As a tax department, they are collecting all data from third parties, requiring them to ensure this information is secure. The tax collected through the Directorate of General Tax includes property tax, oil and gas, GST, and income tax. Local government tax is outside of their realm.
This data is submitted via a combination of offline and online platforms. Yet, their services have not quite breached mobile platforms. This is an area that Mr. Iwan Djuniardi is looking to develop in the years to come.
In 2016, Mr. Iwan Djuniardi pledges to work greatly towards strengthening security throughout his organisation. “This is a big moment for me, we are already looking to debate the budgets for 2016,” said Mr. Iwan Djuniardi. He is working on a strategy to convince others that security is an area, which requires an increased budget.
Next year he added he will be developing the organisation’s cloud and data analytics capacities. He also told us that he is working to bring in a BYOD policy to apply across the organisation. This would also aid in the implementation of increased mobile service delivery.
He is aware that an increase in mobility may create new opportunities for threats. With a growing cyber threat landscape, he must equip his organisation with the right tools to defend themselves from cyber terrorism.