HID Global, a global provider of trusted identity solutions, announced that it has been selected by the State Employment Agency of Indonesia, Badan Kepegawaian Negara (BKN), to provide the smart card printers for printing the smart cards of Indonesian civil servants. The smart cards, named the Kartu PNS Elektronik (KPE) card, are used by active and retired civil servants for a wide range of functions, including withdrawing salary or pension from automated teller machines. Using HID Global FARGO HDP5000 High Definition Printers/Encoders, BKN was able to quickly issue high-quality smart cards to the users, and do so at a relatively low cost.
BKN needed a highly efficient solution that could not only issue cards to both active and retired civil servants, but could also assist in retiring the old system and move all users to the new platform as soon as possible. Quality was also important to BKN because once the civil servants get their new cards, they would have to use the cards to withdraw their pay from the bank, so the cards had to be highly durable and tamper resistant.
The low operating cost allowed BKN to issue KPE cards to all government employees while maintaining a lean budget
Low operating cost to print cards
“We decided to use printers from HID Global because, upon contacting their representatives, we felt that they had the most thorough understanding of our needs as a government department, and, of course, had the offerings to back up their understanding,” said Bajoe Loedi Hargono, Director of System Information Development at BKN.
The KPE project at BKN has produced numerous benefits for the Indonesian government. The HDP5000 addresses one of the most common pain points for IT deployments – cost. The low operating cost allowed BKN to issue KPE cards to all government employees while maintaining a lean budget. Supplies procurement is also simplified, as now BKN sources all its printing supplies from a single local partner.
As the operations for the printers are highly intuitive, BKN also saved the time and cost for training its staff. “The printers are very easy to use – it’s hardly different from printing a regular document. We can encode and print our cards effortlessly,” said Hargono. “Moreover, the way which the HDP5000 prints the cards makes the cards very durable and tampering almost impossible. So far we’ve only learned of only a few incidents where we had to issue a replacement card to the user.”
Affordable and efficient reverse transfer printers
“We are pleased to partner with the Indonesian National Civil Service Agency and enable the agency to issue quickly and cost-effectively large quantity smart cards to Indonesia’s active and retired civil servants. The HDP5000 is one of the market’s most affordable and efficient reverse transfer printers, and a great choice for government agencies such as the BKN,” Hary Permadi Kartono, Director of Sales, ASEAN, Secure Issuance, HID Global.
Within months of the deployment, BKN has already issued a smart card to most of the target users. According to Hargono, user feedback – from both the cardholders and his staff – has been very positive and he hopes more of his peers in the public sector can learn from him and take advantage of technology to better serve the Indonesian people.
