Bureaucratic reform and the digitalisation of public services have been on the Indonesian government’s strategic agenda for more than two decades, yet progress remains hampered by complex, multidimensional challenges. This article aims to conduct a systematic literature review of structural barriers, organisational culture and the capacity of the Civil Service (ASN) in the context of bureaucratic reform and the digitalisation of public services in Indonesia. The research method employed a literature review approach. The findings reveal three key conclusions: (1) structural barriers include the fragmentation of more than 27,000 government applications lacking interoperability, sectoral self-interest creating a ‘silo bureaucracy’, limitations in ICT infrastructure, and political interference in the management of the Civil Service which undermines the merit system; (2) organisational cultural barriers, including a mindset amongst civil servants of seeing themselves as “rulers” rather than “servants”, resistance to change, the illusion that digitalisation merely shifts manual processes to applications without improving business processes, and low levels of inter-agency collaboration; and (3) a capacity gap amongst civil servants, with only 38.69 per cent expected to possess optimal digital competencies by 2025, despite the launch of the 2026 Civil Servant Profiling Programme (ProASN) to objectively map competencies. This article concludes that bureaucratic reform and the digitalisation of public services are not merely technological projects, but rather socio-technical transformations requiring a holistic approach that links structural, cultural and human capacity dimensions within a single outcome-based intervention framework.
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