During the pandemic, we experience loss and many other unfortunate events. The sounds of ambulance sirens become familiar to our ears. News of death is announced even more often than before. There was hardly any good news. Until early 2021, we finally got fresh air from the discourse on the implementation of the vaccination program in Jakarta. Vaccinations that can help build herd immunity to protect us from the virus.
Now, seven months after the first Covid-19 vaccination was carried out in the capital city, the program shifted its focus to target people aged 12 years and older. We also gradually get more various facilities. One of them is the vaccination registration feature through the JAKI application, developed by the Jakarta Provincial Government.
The success of JAKI in providing this service is inseparable from the hard work of various stakeholders. For example, the Jakarta Health Agency and several teams involved in the Jakarta Smart City. In order to pay tribute to these figures, we think it is best to hear the stories behind their efforts in developing a vaccination registration feature on JAKI.
Dr. Ngabila Salama - Jakarta Health Agency
“Everything starts from the planning of vaccination for the elderly,” said Dr. Ngabila Salama, as the Head of Epidemiological and Immunization Surveillance Department of The Jakarta Health Agency. At that time, the vaccination program in Jakarta was about to enter the second phase for public service officers and the elderly. It is quite different from the previous vaccination’s targets, which are the health and public workers whose vaccination processes were carried out in their respective workplaces. The vaccination for the elderly was quite complicated because the elderly stay in various regions and most of them were still confused in finding available vaccination locations.
Dr. Ngabila Salama - Jakarta Health Agency
“In order to accommodate the elderly in Jakarta so they can get vaccinated, we decided to form an online vaccination registration platform. At that time, the Health Agency immediately asked Jakarta Smart City to collaborate, considering that we previously had also collaborated in working in JAKI through developing JakCLM (Corona Likelihood Metric),” she added.
The request was well accepted by the Jakarta Smart City. Both JSC and the Health Agency see JAKI’s potential to be an integrated data and service center regarding Covid-19. Various stakeholders gathered and strategies began to be drawn up. Each Regional Apparatus Organization (OPD) and JSC internal teams carried out their respective roles. Of course, it was all done with good coordination.
Regarding the role of the Health Agency, dr. Ngabila added, “The Health Agency plays a role in finding solutions to various problems in the field or from community complaints. For example, there was a problem about the lack of vaccination quota. We recommended providing quotas and special queues for JAKI registrants. We also added health facilities that serve registration through JAKI so that more people can be vaccinated.” Meanwhile, the process of determining the vaccination quota in JAKI is carried out in detail by specifying the vaccination location, operating hours, JAKI registration quota at each health facility, and break time.
Given the fluctuating conditions at the vaccination site, there is a need for continuous improvement, change, and development of JAKI in order to continue meeting the needs of the community. But sometimes, there are obstacles that the team encounters during the process. “Development of this system involved many parties. Apart from the Health Agency and JSC, there are also PeduliLindungi and Civil Registry Service Office. One of the challenges is to improve the communication between teams,” said dr. Ngabila.
Even with the obstacles and challenges, dr. Ngabila revealed that in the end, the whole team was enthusiastic to help carry out vaccinations through JAKI. “Our team is solid, willing to listen to criticism, and always make improvements.” JAKI’s end-to-end process is also clear. It has succeeded in reducing the accumulation and cutting down the unnecessary steps at the vaccination site so that the vaccination process becomes three times faster.” JAKI’s success has been a source of encouragement for all the teams.
Until now, the Health Agency, Jakarta Smart City, PeduliLindungi, and Civil Registry Service Office are still developing JAKI to become a super app that helps Jakartans, especially during the pandemic. Dr. Ngabila also expressed her hopes regarding JAKI in the future. “We wish to continue collaborating in building JAKI to accelerate the Covid-19 vaccination and mitigation program in Jakarta.”
Dwi Yanti Siregar - Development Team of Jakarta Smart City
Speaking of developing an application, we cannot not talk about the involvement of system developers. In Jakarta Smart City, one of these figures is Dwi Yanti Siregar. As a System Analyst of JSC Development Team, she acknowledged that her team has a vital role in developing the vaccination registration feature in JAKI. “Basically, the Dev Team is responsible for quite many things, from creating business flows, determining the accessible features, to integrating data from the Health Agency and Civil Registry Service Office,” she said.
Dwi Yanti Siregar - JSC Development Team
All of these things are carried out continuously, considering that the system is agile and follows the conditions on site that can change any time. “Initially, the registration feature in JAKI was specifically made for the elderly and vaccine scheduling was done manually. However as Jakarta entered the next phase of vaccination, we provide vaccination registration for 12 years and older, and now registrants can choose their own vaccination location as well as schedule,” Dwi added.
Reading Dwi’s story you can imagine how quickly all parties need to react to the changes, especially the Development Team, who developed the JAKI features. Not to mention, the surging demand for vaccines causes data variations and quotas to collide. “Considering that there is a lot of sensitive user data, our main concern is data security, and how to keep the data of vaccination registrants safe.”
As part of a team that plays an important role in the development of JAKI, Dwi often has mixed feelings when the feature is released or updated. There was a time when a friend of hers, who is a fellow developer, used the JAKI vaccination registration feature. Dwi was nervous, considering that her friend was also an expert in the field. “Fortunately, my friend was quite happy with the feature. He found it helpful because he didn’t have to register for vaccines at the site. It’s safer and saves time,” she said.
“The presence of these people who feel helped by JAKI is what keeps us all excited about developing the feature. I am also happy because I am not only working, but also being able to contribute in helping people to get vaccinated, even only from behind the scenes,” she added.
In the future, Dwi’s hopes for JAKI are quite simple. She hopes that this vaccination registration feature can continue to be useful for the community and more people are getting vaccinated so the pandemic can end sooner.
Andi Sulasikin and Bahrul Ilmi Nasution - Data Team of Jakarta Smart City
In the vaccination registration feature used by Jakartans, obviously there are many variations of incoming data. The team that plays a role in processing all this data is the Data Team of Jakarta Smart City. Andi Sulasikin and Bahrul Ilmi are the two of the members who directly handle the development of this feature.
Andi Sulasikin - JSC Data Team
So, what are the specific roles of the Data Team during the development? Andi explained, there are several tasks, from conducting data validation or quality control, providing reports in the form of dashboard, analysis results on presentations, or aggregate data which can later be used as the basis for the governor’s policy making, entering registration data into P-Care so that it can cut down the vaccination process on-site, to performing data cleaning.
“The Health Agency is the one working in the field. They submit the data to us, the Data Team. The Data and Development Team will process the data so that it can be displayed in the JAKI application,” Bahrul explained. Andi also added, “In short, JSC acts as a system provider and data processor, while the Health Agency acts as a liaison to the vaccination center. For the vaccination program at collaborative vaccination centers, there are also collaborators such as private agencies, BUMN, or BUMD.”
Bahrul Ilmi Nasution - JSC Data Team
At the beginning of system development, the Data Team did encounter technical problems. “We built this feature from scratch. At first, it was difficult to manage the data structure for the Health Agency or collaborators,” Bahrul recalled. “Besides that, there is some returned data that does not match the requested format, so it takes longer for us to clean the data,” he added.
To prevent problems from happening, the Data Team always implements good documentation and backs up one another in providing reports. “To overcome some technical problems when managing data, we also use an automation system so that the data can be directly transferred to the database. That way, the reliability and security of the data is more guaranteed,” said Andi.
Bahrul also shared about his motivation for working on this project, “Maybe our tasks sound complicated, but so far I am very happy to contribute in developing the vaccination registration feature. I get personal satisfaction while working on this project because I can explore the research, process large amounts of data, and learn to work more efficiently. All of this hard work gives me a positive impact.”
Not only does the enthusiasm of the Data Team in developing the feature come from within, it also grows from the responses from JAKI users. Apparently, the Data Team had conducted a sentiment analysis on Twitter regarding the users’ responses to JAKI. The average response received is positive. “We are so happy to be able to help so many people and be a part of a big movement with positive impact. Our hard work paid off,” said Andi.
At the end of the interview, Bahrul uttered his wishes for JAKI, “Hopefully, JAKI can become a one-stop service center for vaccinations. The collaboration between various regional work units is also expected to make all of us more data-savvy.” Another hope was also conveyed by Andi, “Along with our vision to turn Jakarta into a smart city, hopefully the use of technology through JAKI can provide more effective and efficient solutions to various problems encountered by Jakartans.”
Smartcitizen, that’s the story behind the development of the JAKI vaccination registration feature. There are many parties who have to pour their energy and hard work to facilitate easier public access to vaccination. For all of us who meet the vaccination recipients criteria, let’s get vaccinated! You can register yourself through JAKI, now available on Google Play Store or Apple App Store.
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