Indonesia prepares presidential regulations to guide AI adoption in government

Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs is drafting not one Presidential Regulation but two: a 2026–2029 National AI Roadmap, and a separate one on AI Ethics. Two documents. That is the tell. The roadmap is what you table in cabinet; the ethics one is what you wave at the newspapers — and between them they cover a four-year window, roughly the interval between a model launching and anyone remembering its name. Four years is also, coincidentally, about how long a compliance officer survives in any ministry that has just signed a vendor contract.

The substance comes down to four verbs: agencies will 'identify AI risks, protect data, ensure accountability and maintain human oversight' — note the verb, maintain. Not enforce, not audit, not fund, not test. Maintaining human oversight is the pledge you make once the software is installed and the invoice is signed, and it applies 'particularly when AI is used in public services that can affect people's rights' — the courteous way of naming the bit that actually matters: the benefits, the permits, the policing. Everywhere else, oversight is presumably a checkbox nobody reopens after 2029.

Indonesia, in fairness, is the first government we've seen actually answer the policy vacuum we flagged rather than merely describe it — which is more than most capitals have managed. But a roadmap is not a statute, an ethics regulation is not an enforcement mechanism, and the excerpt says nothing about who enforces any of it, what it costs, or when it takes effect. Those, awkwardly, are the details that decide whether it does anything at all. What it does have is the word 'Presidential', which raises the price of ignoring it while changing precisely none of the capabilities. Jakarta gets two documents; the models get the same four years, and they don't read roadmaps.