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"West Java had the highest risk of transmission among Indonesian provinces," he said. "We recommended a wider lockdown."
On May 20, West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil proclaimed the speed of transmission had been cut to a third and that the "curve had flattened".
The president's office, the health ministry, and the communications ministry referred questions on Kawal to the presidential task force on COVID-19. However, Achmad Yurianto, the spokesman for the task force, told Reuters he had never heard of the group.
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The government, he said, has taken appropriate measures in fighting the virus.
"This is learning by doing. We've never had an experience in handling COVID, right?" Yurianto said.
NO COMPLACENCY
Kawal's origins lie in volunteer groups that were set up to monitor 2014 and 2019 elections and which published crowd-sourced results to try to prevent manipulation.
It was launched on March 1, a day before Indonesia declared its first cases. Until then, the health minister had declared it was a "blessing from God" that Indonesia had no infections, although doctors feared that was more due to a lack of testing.
"We want to prevent Indonesia from being complacent," said Kawal co-founder Ainun Najib, adding that the key to saving lives was implementing clear policies.
"The people who were supposed to take care of it didn't," said Najib, who also heads data analytics at Southeast Asian ridehailing company Grab.
It is not the only initiative in the field in Indonesia's booming technology sector. Another one, Lapor COVID-19 (Report COVID-19) seeks to crowdsource coronavirus information.
Other healthtech startups provide free online consultations, which the government itself has urged people to use.
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"Kawal COVID definitely came about because of distrust towards the information provided by the government, at least in the initial stages," said Charlotte Setijadi, an anthropologist at Singapore Management University.
"Generally, people don't believe the data that the government provides, even now, so this is why we see grassroots efforts to filter out the fake news from reliable information."
Kawal's online chat groups connect officials and civil servants across Indonesia.
