The Privacy Challenge in the ‘Smart Era’: A Study of The

Implementation of E-Government in Surabaya

Masitoh Indriani

and Ekawestri Prajwalita Widiati

Department of International Law, Faculty of Law Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia

Department of Constitutional Law, Faculty of Law Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia

Keywords: E-Government, Data Protection, Privacy, Surveillance, Technology.

Abstract: As the concept of smart city is globally trending, Surabaya, the second biggest city in Indonesia, has

adopted those concepts in the form of e-government. Surabaya has been introducing smart city concept to

involve citizen in monitoring in its public services including the budgeting process, monitoring on officials

training, traffic management, quick response management, urban planning, e-health and many more. In the

implementation of e-government, e-readiness becomes important to measure the quality of information used

over infrastructures, business, government and citizen as a user to enjoy the benefit. As a result the use of

surveillance technology is a must. Afterwards, the debate in using such technology is rising. Although the

use of surveillance technology is not a new thing in the implementation of e-government, it is still

questionable whether the right to privacy is disrupted or strengthened. This paper arrives at a conclusion that

the excess of surveillance technology should consider human rights holder as subject of development rather

than mere passive recipient of service.

1 INTRODUCTION

In this Information Era, the concept of Smart city is

recently a new phenomenon due to the city

development. The concept has developed and

focused on new policies in urban planning along

with the using of Information, Communication and

Technology (ICT). There are previously many

studies on smart city from urban planning, public

policy, administration environmental, sociology and

technology.

There should have at least three main pillars on

smart city: infrastructure, human capital and

information managed by certain organization or

department(Tuba Bakici, 2013). Infrastructure

applied in smart city ranging from physic such as

road, buildings up to artificial intelligence and data

analytics such as cyber infrastructure or cyber

layers. Human capital and organization represents on

how smart city managed in such way to increase city

welfare.

The concept of smart city is generally a city that

is considerably capable of managing its resources

effectively and efficiently, by carrying out

innovative, integrated, and sustainable solutions and

providing services and supporting infrastructure to

improve the welfare of its citizens. In addition, a

smart city is essentially a complex framework

surrounding connected objects and technology lead

to produce data to the cloud where intelligence is

managed and analysed to help organization or

management to make better decisions and improve

citizens’welfare (IOT Magazine, 2017).

Furthermore, the issue of big data would also

contribute to complexity of the smart city studies.

Following to the issue on privacy and the

complexity of big data because of the smart city

technology, there would be concerned on how

actually the privacy might be invaded by

surveillance system. As argued by Kurbalija, the

invasion of privacy itself would by caused by

individuals, states and business sector (Kurbalija,

2014).

Surveillance in smart city refers to the

behaviour’s monitoring, activities and other

changing information for the purpose of influencing,

managing, directing or protecting people (Lyon,

2001). Furthermore, surveillance aims at observing

certain object from a distance (Maximino, 2014) like

the use of CCTV or information and communication

interception. Indeed, privacy issue would be the

main issue due to ICT’s involvement as a result of

Indriani, M. and Widiati, E.

The Privacy Challenge in the â

AŸSmart Eraâ

Z: A Study of the Implementation of e-Government in Surabaya.

DOI: 10.5220/0007548606410644

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference Postgraduate School (ICPS 2018), pages 641-644

ISBN: 978-989-758-348-3

641

the surveillance activity although the concept of

privacy itself might vary as privacy determined by

social and national cultural value. Some will

consider privacy is more important but other may

consider it less importance (Kurbalija, 2014).

Undeniably, in the context of smart city, surveillance

technology is commonly used to monitor daily

activity the citizen and its surrounding. The

surveillance system creates certain data in big

volume or massively known as big data.

Meanwhile, to create those smart city, enhancing

the e-Government plays a significant role since the

system of e-Government would connect people,

data, things and process under one single dynamic

global infrastructure. In addition, one of key

activities of smart city can be identified by providing

smart governance through e-Government system. In

this context, e-Government might improve to

achieve good governance specifically for increasing

transparency and accountability. e-Government also

increases community participation to strengthen the

existing democratic system.

There are at least five standards to develop e-

Government system that should meet the

requirements, namely: reliable, interoperable,

scalable, user friendly, and integrate-able (Indonesia,

2004). Reliable, this standard requires that the

application system will run reliably against data

entry errors, the changes on operating system and

bug free. Interoperable, this is to ensure that the

application system will be able to communicate with

other system and able to exchange some data and

information. User friendly, this will ensure that

operation of the application system will be easy for

the user which provides common interface and

adjusted to the users. Lastly, integrate-able will

ensure that the application system has certain

features to integrate with other application systems,

specifically for conducting data and information

exchange between e-Government application

systems, both within the scope of local governments.

In Indonesia, Presidential Instruction No. 3 of

2003 sets out the mandate of the development of e-

Government on National Policy and Strategy for

Developing E-Government (Inpres). The Inpres

states that the development of e-Government is one

of the government's efforts in improving the quality

of public services in various public sectors

effectively and efficiently.

Surabaya, the second biggest city in Indonesia,

succeeded to implement smart city in the form of e-

Government. Surabaya’s e-Government divided into

two main services: the community services and

theregional development planning and management

processes. The community services consists five

clusters ranging from license service, education,

budgeting and procurement (e-Government

Surabaya, 2017).

However, there are certain areas needed to

discuss whether or not the implementation of smart

city will enhance the efficiency and effectiveness on

its service. On the other hand, the surveillance

created by the system will simply invade the citizen

privacy or help for increasing the need of the

security.

This paper is trying to discuss the legal aspect on

the implementation of smart city by portraying the

excess of technology used by smart city happening

in the existing regulation of Surabaya local

government, focussing on the perspective of the

right to privacy.

2 SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM IN

SMART ERA: ENHANCING

EFFICIENCY OR INVADING

PRIVACY

The adopted ICT system of smart city has to do with

city infrastructure, operation and activities. To run

the infrastructure, smart city relies on data in a

massive volume (big data). CCTV, microphones,

sensors are few examples on how the management

to collect such data. The collected data is used

laterto analyse the daily behaviour of the citizen and

its surrounding. This action is possibly alleged as

surveillance.

As It is argued by Lyon, surveillance study is

part of watching the human behaviour (Lyon, 2001).

Therefore there should be a question addressed to

how the citizen respond over those authority’s

control. Surveillance, however, should requires

certain elements such as 1) availability; this element

ensuring reliable access of information used by the

smart city authority since it is impossible to collect

data without reliable on the access to data;

2)integrity; the data should be reliable and accurate;

3)confidentiality; the surveillance system should

ensure the process of collecting, storing and

analysing. The authorized management or

organization will guarantee that the data is treated in

confidential manner; 4) considering the fact that the

operation of ICT might involve many actions, the

idea of accountability essential that users of a system

should be responsible for each step of the actions

they perform(Solove, 2008).

Based on the elements described above, big data

as the main product permits the authority to allow

government or authority to improve public sector

ICPS 2018 - 2nd International Conference Postgraduate School

642

administration and assists global organization in

analysing information to develop strategic planning

(Polonetsky, 2013). As a result, over and inaccurate

personalization to certain data caused by the system

allow to display images to identify fugitives, missing

persons and persons of interest. Yet, there’s always

changing on physical appearance of individual.

Violation occurs when there is an absence of data

protection principles for acquisitioning the data

(Paripurna, et al., 2018). Furthermore, the violation

often occurs when there is a misuse on limited

access of individual in the public sphere in which the

individual might have no control over their own

personal information. This also highlighted by

Posner that this becomes a tool to conceal

information about themselves that others might use

to their advantages (Posner, 1983).

Therefore, it is clear that the surveillance system

might threat citizens’ privacy. Privacy defined as the

control over personal information, yet to decide or to

disclose personal information (Pan, 2016). In line

with that, Solove also highlighted that privacy has

been interpreted widely as the right of a person to

choose seclusion from the attention of others, if they

wish to choose so, also the right to be immune from

scrutiny or being observed in private setting (Solove,

2008). While the smart city is equipped with the data

produced by its surveillance system, the legal

perspective on privacy is determined by the control

of individual to maintain his personal information

from collecting, processing, sharing, retaining or

even manipulating data (Paripurna, et al., 2018).

Moreover, privacy has been considerably a part

of fundamental rights acknowledged in international

legal framework as one rights to be promoted,

protected, and fulfilled by the government.

Consequently, in regard to implementing smart city

as such, the protection over the citizen privacy

should take a place in the first account.

3 HUMAN RIGHTS

PERSPECTIVE TO DEVELOP

IT-BASED SERVICES

An interesting experience once took a place when a

citizen apply for a passport to the immigration

office. To get a passport, a citizen should provide at

least four documents (national identity card, birth

certificate, degree certificate, marriage decree and/or

family identification card). The name typed on the

document is asked to be exactly the same name. In

that occasion, the citizen’s name at the national

identity card (KTP) was a single space different with

the name at the birth certificate. The citizen then

went to the local civil registration bureau of

Surabaya to ask for a letter of proof that the

discrepancy on the documents consisting name are

both valid. Surabaya has applied e-government

system processed this issue through the system and

provided the letter within three days. The citizen

then brought the letter to immigration office to

complete the application. Unfortunately, the letter of

proof issued by the bureau was rejected by the

immigration office because it was signed

electronically. They argued that the regulations

stated that documents should be original in wet

stamped and signed. For that reason, the citizen

should start the administrative procedure at the

beginning; apply for correcting name on KTP and

family identification card. It takes much time about a

month; then re-apply for a passport for other two

weeks.

The fact proves that the implementation of IT-

based government hindered long established

problem related to organization and bureaucracy.

Regarding this, Surabaya city through Mayor

Instrument Number 5 of 2013 concerning guidelines

for the use of information and communication

technology in the implementation of local

government taking into account at least four main

obstacles which are; firstly, there is a lack of

openness to allow the user to understand as well as

monitor the progress of the service process;

secondly, organizational work pattern that are mostly

sectoral; It is difficult to integrate and standardized

public services provided by different government

sectors because they might be has different line of

delegation; there are also a strong bureaucratic rules

that require face-to-face between users and service

providers in many stages of the service process;

again there is strict provisions of the availability of

physical documents beginning of the process

services that cause long delivery and distribution

process documents for evaluation purposes; and

lastly, there is a weak feedback mechanism and

methods use to evaluate each activity to ensure the

accountability of service delivery (Rights, 2006).

E-Government is defined as the process of

utilizing ICT as a tool to improve the efficiency and

quality of public services and government

management. E-Government basically affects two

aspects at once; device or procedures to manage

source of information, also public or society that is

the recipient of services. Consequently, development

of e-government should not merely mind the

sophistication of the application of technology but

also taking human rights into consideration in all

sequence.

The Privacy Challenge in the â

AŸSmart Eraâ

Z: A Study of the Implementation of e-Government in Surabaya

643

It is also found that in the IT-based service

delivery, the government still relies on the third

parties. For this reason it is crucial to consider in

which sequence of the process that might violate the

rights holder. Being that, the regulation concerning

data protection, data sharing and data owned are still

incomplete. Correspondingly, local government

should be extra careful when they develop smart city

system.

In the perspective of human rights, it is

essentially important to check whether or not e-

government system aware of some good practices

includes; whether the people are recognized as key

actors in their own development, rather than passive

recipients of commodities and services; whether the

programmes focus on marginalized, disadvantaged,

and excluded groups; and whether the programmes

aim to reduce disparity. Human rights-based

approach can be used as parameters to evaluate the

process. Human rights-based approach is a

conceptual framework for the process of human

development that is normatively based on

international human rights standards and

operationally directed to promoting and protecting

human rights. It seeks to analyse inequalities which

lie at the heart of development problems and redress

discriminatory practices and unjust distributions of

power that impede development progress.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The implementation of e-government is expected to

improve the quality of citizens’ lifeto ease the

citizen to access the information so that it meet the

citizens’ informationright and to build a more

transparent governance practices. Furthermore, E-

Government offers effectiveness and efficiency in

the delivery of public services such as cutting

licensing bureaucracy together with facilitating

coordination between government agencies.

However, the analysis found the fact that in some

manners, the use of technology, including

surveillance, data collecting etc. paper tends to treat

citizen as an object rather than subject as rights-

holders. The excess of surveillance technology that

has been used in smart city might be threatening

privacy in terms of the limitation access over

citizen’s personal information in the public sphere. It

should take into account that smart city is for people

which cannot be determined by algorithms or

system. Besides, that smart city programme is

expected to improve efficiency at the most, the

surveillance systems and its technology should

support the citizen rights which allow them to be

more flourishing through critical thoughts or

ongoing debate, while authority should guarantee the

citizen rights by enabling the sufficient regulation

protecting their rights to control over personal

information.

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