Robert Go, Jakarta – Indonesia launches its election process today, beginning a census of its 210 million citizens and the registration of about 130 million people eligible to vote in April next year.

The plan, according to elections commission KPU, is to send 230,000 bureaucrats door-to-door with questionnaires, in the cities, rural areas and jungles.

The data, which will be fully computerised for the first time, will be used by KPU to plan and conduct future elections and by other agencies for their own purposes.

Some $100 million – about one-sixth of the total elections budget – has been allocated to this process, which officials aim to finish by August.

This is no April Fool's joke, but it could turn out to be one, considering the project's ambitious scale, the short timeframe and doubts about bureaucrats' technical proficiency.

Every one of KPU's registrars would have to question 950 citizens and record complete information about them between now and August.

While the process might be easy enough in villages or smaller communities, it is not so in overcrowded metropolises such as Jakarta or Surabaya and the remote and hard-to-reach areas.

Would government workers be trekking through jungles to track down nomads? How would they forward their data to a processing centre? Experts also said that five months was not enough time for such a big job. Regular censuses are conducted over several years, and even those are notorious for being inaccurate.

Another big question surrounds bureaucrats' technical abilities. The government has already distributed computers to be used in this census.

But those familiar with statistics bureau BPS' pencil-and-paper methodologies now worry that the high-priced hardware is more likely to serve up more Solitaire games than Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

A final problem: Most Indonesians know nothing about the registration process or the fact that next year's elections will be very different from before.

For it to work, registrars have to physically verify individuals and record entire family units in one shot. It would get too confusing otherwise, especially as most Indonesians use only one name.

To be successful, there has to be a broad public-awareness campaign designed to alert citizens and encourage them to help the process by being present when civil servants come knocking. Such a process has yet to happen.

The voter-registration plans do not constitute a joke yet. But in the eyes of many experts, this is another case of the country trying to bite off more than it can chew.