The Innovative Government Award (IGA), organized by Kemendagri, has an ideal set of General Innovation Requirements. However, the ranking and scoring-focused system inadvertently creates a structural gap between the award’s goals and the reality on the ground, leading to pseudo-innovation and inefficient spending.
Innovation as a Competition Commodity
Innovation has become a commodity pursued for IGA scores, a process that creates distortion against the three critical quality requirements:
1. The Erosion of Poin 5 (Replication)
The most significant structural challenge is the violation of Poin 5, which mandates that innovations must be replicable and adoptable by other regions.
- The Structural Flaw: The IGA mechanism awards higher scores for Creating New Innovations than for Adopting Proven Solutions. Regions are incentivized to create duplicates (a high-cost activity) to gain high scores, rather than pursuing low-cost replication (the intent of Poin 5).
- Wasted Budget: This system fuels inefficiency through duplication of budget. Significant regional funds are used for R&D and vendor procurement to recreate applications that already exist and have won previous IGA awards.
2. Misusing Poin 1 (Renewal)
IGA Requirement Poin 1 demands that an innovation contain renewal of all or part of its elements.
- The Practice: Regions exploit “partial renewal” to justify submitting slightly modified versions of successful programs. This approach allows pseudo-innovation changes that enable them to claim a high score, without solving the structural bureaucratic problems.
- Result: Large resources are spent on low-impact, surface-level innovation, diverting funds from more pressing infrastructure or social needs.
3. The Gap in Poin 2 (Benefit): Disproportionate Cost
IGA Requirement Poin 2 mandates that an innovation must provide benefits to the region.
- The Problem: The IGA system primarily focuses on output metrics (e.g., faster service time) rather than requiring strict Cost-Benefit Analysis relative to the investment. A high procurement cost that far exceeds the fair market value (a common issue in government IT) renders the innovation financially inefficient, despite meeting the Poin 2 requirement on paper.
- Consequence: Public funds are not utilized optimally, as the high cost outweighs the value of the benefits claimed.
Yet, the Real Key is Collaboration, Not Competition
The IGA system’s failure to enforce Poin 5 means it is actively undermining its potential to become a true catalyst for regional progress. If the goal is efficient public service improvement, the system must focus on strengthening Poin 5 through collaboration:
A. Reforming IGA Incentives to Reward Adoption
The government needs to adjust IGA scoring to explicitly reward efficiency and collective learning:
- Prioritize Adoption Scores: Give substantial bonus points or a dedicated award category to regions that successfully adapt and implement proven solutions from other IGA winners (demonstrating compliance with Poin 5) with minimal budget.
- Mandate Technical Sharing: Establish a requirement for IGA winners to submit source code and full documentation to a central, open repository, facilitating the technical and legal process for other regions to comply with Poin 5.
B. Redirecting Budget from Contest to Transfer
Budgets currently allocated for the administrative overhead of the competition should be redirected:
- Fund Transfer Teams: Allocate resources to technical teams dedicated to assisting regional governments in the replication, adaptation, and successful deployment of existing, proven innovations, replacing the need for costly external vendors and duplicative R&D.
IGA must be transformed from a Competition Showcase into an Optimal Solution Integration Forum. By prioritizing collaboration and spending efficiency, public funds can be utilized optimally, rather than wasted in the pursuit of trophies and rankings.
Conclusion: Time to Change the Paradigm
The IGA has great potential to be a catalyst for service improvement. However, its current design is creating a structural misalignment where the pursuit of awards actively undermines the core mandates of its own guidelines, leading to inefficiency and wasted public funds.
Here are the key takeaways:
- The System Undermines Itself: The mechanism incentivizes duplication (violating Poin 5: Replicability) because it rewards the creation of new entries over the efficient adoption of proven solutions.
- The Budget Drain: This competition-driven duplication forces regions to allocate substantial funds for unnecessary R&D and procurement, instead of using those funds for critical infrastructure or social services.
- The Path Forward is Collaboration: The IGA must be transformed from a Competition Showcase into an Optimal Solution Integration Forum. This requires shifting the scoring mechanism to prioritize and highly reward successful adoption and making the sharing of source code and documentation mandatory.
By prioritizing collaboration and spending efficiency (in line with the spirit of Poin 2 and Poin 5), public funds can be utilized optimally, rather than being wasted in the pursuit of trophies and rankings. True innovation is achieved through mutual support, not adversarial competition.
References:
INNOVATIVE GOVERNMENT AWARD
Pedoman Nilai Indeks