Administrative Burden and the Contestability Gap in Digital Welfare in Indonesia
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Abstract
Indonesia's Cek Bansos and Data Tunggal Sosial dan Ekonomi Nasional arrangement allowed citizens to view welfare information and request updates when recorded conditions appeared inaccurate. This study examined how the publicly documented correction route structured contestability when a welfare classification was disputed. A qualitative single case design was used with directed document analysis of twelve public materials issued between 2021 and 2026. Current institutional claims relied on the 2025 and 2026 regime, while earlier materials were used only to trace the history of citizen initiated correction. The analysis identified clear routes for status checking and data updating, but responsibility for verification, recalculation, complaints, and reconsideration remained divided across local government, social service actors, Ministry channels, and Statistics Indonesia. Public materials explained welfare deciles in general but provided less case specific information about why a household received a particular classification and who could authoritatively reconsider it. The study identified a contestability gap between available correction and a publicly intelligible route to authoritative reconsideration. Administrative burden helped explain why that institutional distance mattered without treating unequal access or discriminatory effects as empirical findings.
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