Complaining to improve governance: four stories of complaint-handling systems in Indonesia

Since joining the Open Government Partnership in 2011, the Indonesian Government has shown some commitment towards implementing initiatives that increase citizen voice and social accountability. These include a series of ICT-based complaint-handling systems that give members of the public an opportunity to highlight problems with the delivery of public services to those in a position to fix them. Yet the reach and uptake of these systems – which are both national and local – varies considerably across the country, for a number of reasons. This research examines four cases of complaint-handling systems. It asks how, and by whom, complaint-handling systems are used, in order to establish what makes a complaint-handling system succeed or fail.