Kominfo Blocks PSEs That Haven't Registered Today, UGM IT Expert Says Sanctions Are Right

Illustration of students playing smartphones. (Between)

JAKARTA - Gadjah Mada University (UGM) information technology expert Ridi Ferdiana assessed that the government's blocking sanctions for violators of regulations related to private registration of Electronic System Operators (PSE) were appropriate.

"The government has done the right thing to enforce regulations and governance of electronic system services," said Ridi Ferdiana when contacted in Yogyakarta, Wednesday, July 20.

According to him, multinational PSE companies such as Google, Meta, Twitter, and Whatsapp whose services are widely used by Indonesian people must cooperate by complying with the applicable rules in Indonesia.

"Also providing input related to best practices to jointly build better Indonesian regulations," he said.

Ridi said the purpose of PSE's obligation is to record and manage electronic services so that they have a good basis.

When electronic-based information systems become pervasive or integrated in everyday life, he said, these arrangements are very important.

"We know that every morning, every day, every hour many Indonesians use Google, Meta, Twitter, Whatsapp, and so on," he said.

However, according to Ridi, the most important thing is to ensure that the government has conducted hearings on the related companies.

In addition, he said, the government must provide counseling to companies so that regulation Number 71 of 2019 concerning the Implementation of Electronic Systems and Transactions can be implemented properly, flexibly, and does not harm many parties.

"Apart from that, the government must also provide a reliable system for registering PSE companies," he said.

Enforcement of the rules, he said, needs to be balanced with the reliability of the PSE system in accepting registrations so that it is efficient and does not make it difficult for companies.

The synergy of government regulations and a comfortable environment in doing business, according to him, will encourage blocking cases not to occur.

Service migration

Meanwhile, if a violation occurs and then a blocking sanction is imposed, according to him, it is likely that a number of impacts will arise, one of which is a decline in economic transactions.

"As an example, WA (WhatsApp) users are 88.7 percent of the population in Indonesia and even Indonesia is the top three in the world. If only 10 percent make economic transactions through WA, you can imagine how much potential the economy has stopped," he said.

The next impact, continued Ridi, is that other PSE companies will compete to register themselves to register services.

In addition, he predicts there will be a migration of private services from one service to a similar service, for example, from Google to Microsoft and from WA to Telegram.

"This is unavoidable because these services are now a vital and part of life," said Ridi Ferdiana.

Based on Antara's report, the government through the Ministry of Communication and Informatics has set Wednesday, July 20, as the deadline for private PSE registration, which can be done on the official Online Single Submission (OSS) website oss.go.id and then on the jasa.kominfo.go.id website.

Starting July 21, Kominfo will impose sanctions on PSEs who have not registered. In the first stage, the sanction given is a written warning.

If the PSE deadline is still having problems registering, Kominfo opens the opportunity to submit the registration manually.