Reconstructing the Public Service Paradigm for Business Actors: From Policy Objects to Strategic Government Partners in Economic Development

Abstract

Public services connected with business activity in Indonesia have been progressively digitized and reorganized, yet legal and administrative friction remains visible when requirements, data, and operational instructions are not synchronized across institutions. Such friction can place business actors in the position of carrying documents between government bodies, repeating information already held by the state, or attempting to satisfy a requirement that another agency is not legally or technically able to issue. This article examines the legal position of business actors within the public-service framework and develops a normative reconstruction that treats them as strategic partners in economic development without weakening the regulatory and supervisory authority of the state. The study uses doctrinal legal research with statutory and conceptual approaches. Primary legal materials include the Public Service Law, the Government Administration Law, the Job Creation Law, Government Regulation Number 28 of 2025 on Risk-Based Business Licensing, regulations on One Data Indonesia and Electronic-Based Government Systems, and the Personal Data Protection Law. Secondary materials consist of public-administration and legal scholarship on public service, licensing, interoperability, and collaborative governance. The analysis finds that the central difficulty is not simply the number of regulations but the fragmentation of regulatory design, government business processes, data governance, and change management. The proposed model rests on legal certainty, integrated process ownership, a lawful single-source-of-data approach, a prohibition on shifting internal coordination failures to applicants, time-bound cross-sector escalation, synchronized updates to rules and digital systems, and transparent participation by businesses of different sizes. The reconstruction is intended to improve the predictability and accountability of public services while preserving public interest, equality before the law, data protection, and substantive compliance obligations.