The central issue of bureaucratic reform today is no longer merely about integrity. Integrity is crucial, but the more complex challenge lies in ensuring that bureaucracy can innovate without falling into the trap of criminal law.
The case of Nadiem Makarim, former CEO of Gojek who later became Minister of Education of Indonesia, illustrates this paradox. A program to procure Chromebooks for school digitalization—meant to accelerate educational transformation—ended up entangled in legal prosecution.
This phenomenon reveals a dangerous gap in Indonesia’s legal system: public officials can be criminally charged not because they enrich themselves, but because they deviate from rigid procedures—even if their intention was to build and reform.
Colliding Cultures
Public bureaucracy is grounded in rule-based governance: every decision must follow written rules, formal procedures, and comprehensive documentation.
In contrast, business—especially startups—follows result-based governance: speed, improvisation, and flexibility.
When public officials come from business backgrounds, these two cultures collide. What is considered “innovation” in the private sector can easily be judged as “abuse of authority” in the public sector.
Indonesia’s Anti-Corruption Law (UU Tipikor), particularly Articles 2 and 3, exacerbates this vulnerability. The law is broad enough that the mere presence of state financial losses is sufficient for prosecution, regardless of personal enrichment. This is often described as the criminalization of public policy.
Learning from South Korea. South Korea faced similar dilemmas in the early 2000s when it sought rapid digital government innovation. The solution was the regulatory sandbox.
According to OECD (2019), this sandbox provides a safe space for innovation to be tested without waiting for full legal frameworks. For instance, a new public service application could be piloted immediately, provided it adhered to transparency and evaluation mechanisms.
The result, Korea’s bureaucracy remained adaptive, while public officials were protected from criminal charges for implementing policies in legal grey zones. If proven successful, the innovation was later formalized into regulation.
Singapore, trust by design. Singapore is well known for its adaptive bureaucracy. Its Smart Nation program is not only about technology but also about governance philosophy: trust by design.
The Civil Service College Singapore (2020) emphasizes that every public sector innovation must be equipped with legal safeguards from the beginning. Officials are not left alone to face uncertainty.
Additionally, Singapore established the Public Sector Transformation Lab, a policy laboratory where new ideas are tested with legal and audit experts involved from the outset. This ensures innovation is legally sound before nationwide rollout, preventing criminalization of policy experimentation.
India, legal immunity for innovation. India faced immense challenges in launching Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital identity program covering over a billion people.
The World Bank (2018) notes that Aadhaar could only succeed because India introduced a legal immunity clause: public officials were granted limited immunity, shielding them from immediate criminal liability for procedural mistakes, as long as there was no evidence of personal enrichment.
This approach enabled bold innovation while maintaining accountability. Minor administrative errors were resolved administratively, not through criminal prosecution.
Unfortunately, Indonesia has not adopted similar mechanisms.
Our bureaucratic reform remains dominated by slogans: integrity zones, clean governance, and corruption-free bureaucracies. While important, these reforms touch only the surface.
On the ground, public officials still live in fear: one procedural misstep, and they risk prosecution. As a result, many local leaders adopt the safest strategy—doing nothing. Stagnation becomes preferable to the risk of imprisonment.
The Chromebook case should serve as a loud alarm. It shows that innovation without legal protection leaves public officials vulnerable to inevitable prosecution.
Toward an Innovative Bureaucracy
Drawing lessons from Asia, three pathways could guide Indonesia.
First, safe harbor for innovation. Like in Korea, Indonesia needs a regulatory sandbox for bureaucracy. This safe harbor ensures that innovations can be tested even when legal frameworks are incomplete, provided transparency and oversight are maintained.
Second, revise the Anti-Corruption Law. Articles 2 and 3 of the Tipikor Law must be clarified. There should be a clear separation between policy failure and genuine corruption. Policy errors without malicious intent should be addressed through administrative law, not criminal law.
Third, strengthen internal oversight. Inspectorates-general in ministries and agencies must act as compliance guardians. They should not only audit after problems arise but also accompany the policy-making process from the start. Singapore’s model shows how innovation can be guided legally from inception.
Indonesia’s bureaucratic reform must evolve from a focus on integrity reform to innovation reform. Integrity without innovation produces a clean but stagnant bureaucracy. Innovation without integrity produces a fast but corrupt bureaucracy. The challenge is to combine both.
We need a legal framework that not only prevents corruption but also protects courageous officials. Without it, officials will always choose the safest path: silence and inaction. That, ultimately, harms public welfare far more than the risk of procedural mistakes.
So, the case of Nadiem and the Chromebooks should not be read merely as a personal scandal, but as an institutional lesson: Indonesia’s legal framework is not yet prepared to distinguish between innovation and manipulation.
South Korea, Singapore, and India demonstrate that solutions exist. Regulatory sandboxes, trust by design, and legal immunity can protect innovation while maintaining accountability.
If Indonesia truly aspires for a modern bureaucracy, it must create a “legal umbrella for innovation.”
Without it, public officials will remain paralyzed by fear of prosecution. And the nation will continue to stagnate—watching the future unfold, but too afraid of the law to chase it.
