Beyond Digital Bookkeeping: Siskeudes Implementation and the Accountability Gap in an Indonesian Nagari

Abstract

Digital financial systems are expected to strengthen village financial accountability, yet standardized records do not necessarily yield accessible public scrutiny. This article examines the implementation of Indonesia’s Village Financial System (Siskeudes) in Nagari Padang Harapan, West Pasaman, and explains why administrative compliance and public accountability may diverge. Drawing on a qualitative descriptive case study involving eight purposively selected informants—nagari administrators, the Siskeudes operator, village consultative representatives, a village facilitator, and residents—the analysis interprets interviews, observation, and documents through Edward III’s four implementation dimensions: communication, resources, disposition, and bureaucratic structure. The findings show that Siskeudes supports budgeting, transaction recording, bookkeeping, and financial reporting. Nevertheless, uneven technical competence, dependency on one operator, late submission of supporting documents, intermittent connectivity, and limited community-facing budget detail constrain its governance value. Internal coordination and positive staff attitudes have not fully resolved these structural bottlenecks. The article identifies a distinction between administrative traceability and public intelligibility: financial information may be formally processed within a digital system while remaining insufficiently legible and contestable to residents. It develops an evidence-informed implementation-to-accountability framework linking workflow discipline, distributed competence, reliable infrastructure, deliberative disclosure, and responsive oversight. The conclusions are analytically transferable propositions from a single case rather than claims of measured causal effects or demonstrated audit outcomes.