Digital Maturity and Its Policy Implications: A Governance Analysis of Smart City Development in the City of Jakarta and the City of Madiun Isnaeni Yuliani, Indra Pratama Putra Salmon
Public Administration, Universitas Terbuka
Abstract
Digital transformation has shifted urban governance away from mere technology adoption toward a foundation for the sustainability of the urban ecosystem. In Indonesia, the Movement Toward 100 Smart Cities,launched in 2017, has yet to be matched by commensurate empirical achievement. The 2024 National SPBE (Electronic-Based Government System) Index stands at only 3.12 out of a maximum of 5, while the 2025 Digital Society Index (IMDI) reveals a stark gap between the infrastructure pillar (53.06) and the empowerment pillar (34.42). This phenomenon points to a research gap concerning how uniform digital maturity models fail to accommodate differing city typologies, particularly between megacities and mid-sized cities. This study employs a descriptive qualitative approach with a comparative case study design in DKI Jakarta and the City of Madiun, drawing on semi-structured interviews, documentary study, and field observation, and analyzed using an interactive model. The findings show that Jakarta (with an SPBE score of 4.35 and more than 7 million downloads of the JAKI application) has adopted a technology-driven smart city paradigm grounded in big data and IoT integration, yet remains constrained by sectoral ego among agencies and spatially patterned digital literacy gaps. In contrast, the City of Madiun (with an SPBE score of 4.10) demonstrates policy agility through a human-centric smart city approach, expanding equitable internet access, strengthening civil servants digital literacy, and providing intensive assistance to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), despite being constrained by limited fiscal capacity and a shortage of ICT expertise. The analysis indicates that smart city success is determined by the contextual fit between technology and institutional capacity rather than by the magnitude of digital maturity alone, such that the two cities policy trajectories are divergent rather than convergent. This study implies the need to reorient national policy away from uniform smart city evaluation indicators toward a framework that accommodates heterogeneity in inter-city capacity, alongside the strengthening of collaborative governance and adaptive regulation in Indonesia.
Keywords: collaborative governance, digital maturity, public policy, smart city
Topic: Building Adaptive and Digitally-Enabled Public Administrations for Responsive Governance (Adaptive Governance- Digital Public Administration- Responsive Public Service Delivery)
