SIMKAH Digitalization Exposes Cultural and Structural Marriage Registration Gaps: Digitalisasi SIMKAH Mengungkap Kesenjangan Budaya dan Struktural dalam Pendaftaran Perkawinan

Nur Laili Hidayati (Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya)
Muhammad Waliyuddin Yusuf (Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya)
Nichatus Sholikah (Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya, Indonesia)
Achmad Fajruddin Fatwa (Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Ampel Surabaya)

Indonesian Journal of Innovation Studies
Vol. 27 No. 4 (2026): October

General Background: Marriage registration in Indonesia has shifted from conventional documentation toward digital administration through the Marriage Management Information System (SIMKAH), intended to integrate data, accelerate services, and reduce document forgery. Specific Background: This transition relocates the evidentiary and symbolic function of the physical marriage book into cyberspace, where legal authenticity intersects with cultural attachment to material documents. Knowledge Gap: Previous studies addressed digital Islamic family law, online marriage, and virtual marriage, but the manuscript identifies an unfilled sociological-legal analysis of cyber-based marriage registration regulation. Aims: This normative legal study analyzes existing regulation, social action, and community responses to regulatory and technological change through Max Weber’s rationalization and bureaucracy perspective. Results: Digital-media users tend to accept electronic legality, whereas traditional groups may experience digital stuttering and perceive diminished symbolic value and sacredness. Implementation also faces unequal internet infrastructure, personal-data vulnerabilities, and persistent conventional bureaucracy. Novelty: The study frames cyber-based marriage registration as a tension between legal authenticity and cultural authenticity within the rationalization of modern bureaucracy. Implications: Successful implementation requires not only technological capability but also social trust and policies responsive to the socio-cultural conditions of Indonesian society. Highlights: Technology-familiar users generally accept electronic legality, whereas traditional groups may associate physical documents with sacredness and symbolic value. Unequal internet access, personal-data vulnerability, and conventional bureaucracy remain major implementation barriers. Weberian rationalization indicates that modernization requires public trust and policies responsive to local social conditions. Keywords: Marriage Registration, Cyberspace, SIMKAH, Sociology of Law, Max Weber.