e-Government

Assignment 2: Writing a Paper

Amir Syafrudin
NPM: 1306346771

Magister Teknologi Informasi

Fakultas Ilmu Komputer
Universitas Indonesia
October 2013

The Conceptual Model of eHalal:

A Reliable Source for Halal Information in Indonesia
Amir Syafrudin
1306346771

Abstract
Halal, meaning permissible, is one of the main principles in Islam. Therefore, having a reliable source to inquire
halal information is crucial for Muslims. In Indonesia, Muslim citizens should be able to rely on LPPOM MUI as this is
the national authority that publishes halal certificates. This paper examines the efforts made by LPPOM MUI in
providing answers for halal information inquiries from Indonesian Muslim citizens. Findings suggest that the system
currently provided by LPPOM MUI does not fulfill the triangle of reliability, which is availability, accessibility, and
clarity. A conceptual model of eHalal is then proposed to provide a reliable system for answering halal information
inquiries.

Introduction
Indonesia is a country with the majority of citizens following the religion of Islam. Islam teaches the principle of
halal, meaning permissible, and haram, meaning forbidden. It is one of the main principles that encompasses all
matters in the daily life of a Muslim that must be obeyed by every Muslim in the world; not only in Indonesia.
To regulate all matters related to halal/haram, Indonesia has MUI (Majelis Ulama Indonesia). MUI is the national
Islamic religious council that is responsible for regulating all kinds of fatwa regarding Islamic affairs in Indonesia. In
performing their responsibilities, MUI has a few institutions working under its flag. The institution that specifically
handles the halal/haram certification of food and beverages is the LPPOM MUI (Lembaga Pengkajian Pangan, Obatobatan, dan Kosmetika Majelis Ulama Indonesia).
LPPOM MUI is basically an authority that publishes halal certificate for foods, drugs, and cosmetics in Indonesia.
So in terms of food and beverages, the halal certificate published by LPPOM MUI served as an assurance that the
related food and beverage products fulfills the halal standard of the Islamic law. With this we can say that every product
labeled with the halal certificate of LPPOM MUI is guaranteed to be permissible for consumption by Muslim.
However, finding the halal certificate for every food or beverage are not that simple. While most packaged goods
have the halal certificate (in the form of a LPPOM MUI halal logo) on their packaging, this is not the case for most
restaurants. Some restaurants might explicitly show the halal certificate or halal logo for their customers to see but other
restaurants might not be that explicit. These restaurants might still claim that they serve halal food and beverages even
though they fail to provide any evidence to support their claim. This kind of behavior might lead customers to doubt the
halal status of each of these restaurants.
To be able to diminish this doubtful thoughts, Muslims need a reliable source of information regarding the halal
status of every food or beverage that they are consuming. So instead of relying only on information provided by sellers
and producers, e.g. halal certificate or halal logo, it would be best to inquire this information directly from LPPOM
MUI. LPPOM MUI is the most informed institutions regarding the halal status of most food and beverages sold in
Indonesia. Therefore, LPPOM MUI will obviously be the most reliable source of information.
The question is, what is the best option to enable Muslim customers to inquire halal information from LPPOM
MUI? The best alternative for the communication medium is obviously the Internet. Not only is Internet cheap, we can
also say that, due to advances in technology, Internet is accessible from anywhere at anytime by anyone. It has become
the primary option for communication because it is used for conducting many kinds of activities which includes
socializing, sharing, chatting, and even working. If LPPOM MUI wants to open a two-way communication line for the
citizens of Indonesia, then the Internet will definitely be the best option.
However, the Internet alone does not offer a complete solution. How should both parties, LPPOM MUI and
Indonesian citizens, use the Internet to communicate with each other? The paper looks to answer this question by
proposing a conceptual model for eHalal. eHalal will be a system, NOT an information system, that basically acts as an
interface for submitting halal information inquiries to LPPOM MUI. With eHalal, Indonesian Muslim citizens should be
able to easily inquire halal information from a centralized and reliable source.
In proposing the model, we will first investigate current efforts made by LPPOM MUI to address the problems
described above. We'll be examining the search feature offered in the official website of LPPOM MUI and halal
information provided through the official Twitter account of LPPOM MUI. Finally, we'll discuss the findings to use it as
a basis for proposing the conceptual model of eHalal.

Discussion
As mentioned above, it is clear that halal information is an important matter for Muslim. In the case of a country
with the majority of its population being Muslim, Indonesia obviously need to take this matter seriously. LPPOM MUI

has implemented a few services to tackle this problem mainly through its official website (halalmui.org) and its official
Twitter account (@halalindonesia).

Current Systems
In halalmui.org, LPPOM MUI implemented a search feature to search for halal products that own valid halal
certificate. The search feature is currently accessible through the sidebar of the main page of halalmui.org by clicking a
menu name Find Halal Product. Find Halal Product allows visitors to search for halal information using three search
criteria, which is Nama Produk (Product Name), Nama Produsen (Producer Name), and Nomor Sertifikat (Certificate
Number).
We tested searching for halal products based on Product Name because people will obviously identify a product
based on its name; and not the name of its producer/manufacturer or even the number of its halal certificate. We
conducted the test using three common keywords: magnum, pizza hut, and solaria. magnum and pizza hut
are two products known to Indonesian citizens that already own a halal certificate, while solaria haven't own one. The
result of the test are as follows:
A search for magnum returns NO result. This is the opposite of our expectation because we know that
Magnum Ice Cream already has a halal certificate. The search for magnum should have returned at least one
result. Does this mean that magnum is not halal or is it just a technical problem with the search feature?
A search for pizza hut returns only 1 result. This is our expected result. However, the search result are
jumbled together with other products registered with same certificate number. This form of search result made
it difficult to easily find the halal information for pizza hut.
A search for solaria returns NO result. This is also expected from the test. However, if we look at the case on
searching for magnum, no search result for solaria might mean that solaria is not halal or, again, it's just
another technical problem with the search feature.
The results described above suggested that retrieving halal information for a certain product is difficult. The search
result is either jumbled or ambiguous, thus making it hard to determine if the product being searched by website visitors
is really certified or not.
Next we observe the status updates (commonly referred to as tweets) of the official Twitter account of LPPOM
MUI: @halalindonesia. Our aim is to observe the activities of @halalindonesia and to discover tweets that is responding
to halal information inquiries from other Twitter accounts. Tweets from the last 3 months should be sufficient to conduct
this observation so we limit our observation to tweets from July, August, and September 2013. The result of the
observation is as follows:
No.

Date

Number of Tweets

Monday, September 30, 2013

Friday, September 27, 2013

Monday, September 23, 2013

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Monday, September 16, 2013

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Friday, September 13, 2013

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Friday, August 30, 2013

10

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

11

Thursday, August 1, 2013

12

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

13

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

14

Saturday, July 13, 2013

15

Friday, July 12, 2013

16

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

17

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Total

42

Table 1: Number of Tweets per Day from @halalindonesia

Below is the number of tweets per month based on the data from Table 1:
No.

Date

Number of Tweets

September 2013

12

August 2013

11

July 2013

19

Total

42

Table 2: Number of Tweets per Month from @halalindonesia

By identifying the tweets that is responding to halal information inquiries, we have the data presented in the table
below:
No.

Date

Number of All
Tweets

Number of Halal
Tweets

Percentage of
Halal Tweets

September 2013

12

50%

August 2013

11

72.73%

July 2013

19

11

57.89%

Total

42

25

Table 3: All Tweets vs "Halal" Tweets

As seen in Table 3, within the perios of 3 months, @halalindonesia only sent 42 tweets in only 17 days within the
period of 3 months. Even though the average tweet per day is 2.47 for these 17 days, if we consider a total of 92 days
from July to September, the average only reached 0.46 tweet per day. Not only does the number of tweets is extremely
low, the occurrences of these tweets does not fill any pattern. Most tweets are sent during working day, but some tweets
are also sent during weekends. We also have weeks without any tweets sent from @halalindonesia. This high level of
unpredictability suggested that the availability of the administrator of @halalindonesia is low.
Regarding the halal tweets, we can see that there are 25 tweets sent from @halalindonesia that contains halal
information for specific products asked by other Twitter accounts. Compared to the total number of tweets, which 42,
the percentage are high. This suggests that tweets answering halal information inquiries are considered important by the
administrator of @halalindonesia. However, due to the fact that the availability of the administrator is low, halal
information from @halalindonesia should also be considered unreliable.
The biggest advantage that the halal tweets have against halal information provided by Find Halal Product in
halalmui.org is that the tweets are more specific and straightforward. They are specific because it provided halal
information only on the product being asked, as opposed to jumbling it together with other products like the website's
search feature. They are straightforward because the answers are always one in two possibilites: certified or not
certified. This is the opposite of having an ambiguous no result answer like the search feature in halalmui.org.

Comparison of Current Systems

At this point, it is clear that both services (the search feature in halalmui.org and halal tweets from
@halalindonesia) have their own advantages and disadvantages for answering halal information inquiries. These
advantages (or disadvantages) can be seen in a more thorough comparison as provided in the table below.
Search Feature

Twitter Account

Accessible through the Internet.

Accessible through the Internet.

Accessible by using web browsers.

Accessible by using web browsers and other methods such

as using smartphone applications or via SMS due to the
fact that Twitter supported these access methods.

Inquiries are responded automatically by system.

Inquiries are responded manually by (human)

administrator.

Available at anytime provided there are no technical

problems.

Availability relies heavily on the availability of the

administrator.

The halal information are jumbled and ambiguous.

The halal information are specific and straightforward.

Table 4: Search Feature in halalmui.org vs "Halal" Tweets from @halalindonesia

As we can see, the search feature has the advantage on availability, while the official Twitter account of LPPOM
MUI has the advantage of accessibility and clarity. All these advantages are required to be integrated to have a reliable
system for answering inquiries regarding halal information for products in Indonesia. It is these advantages that we will
be discussing when proposing the conceptual model of eHalal system.

The Conceptual Model of eHalal

As identified above, we need to combine the advantages of the search feature in halalmui.org and the official
Twitter account of LPPOM MUI (@halalindonesia) into eHalal. The combination of these advantages defines the
characteristics required to implement a reliable system for Indonesian Muslim citizens to inquire halal information. The
characteristics, in what we call the triangle of reliability, are as follows:
clarity,
availability, and
accessibility.

Figure 1: The Triangle of Reliability

Availability means that eHalal system should be available for inquiries at anytime. Responses for halal information
inquiries should be handled automatically using a computer application, instead of being handled manually by human
administrators. To actually implement a reliable system, we need to make sure that the system is available to process
requests at any given time.
Another important characteristic is accessibility. Since the Internet will become the primary medium to connect
between LPPOM MUI and Indonesia Muslim citizens, we will need an application that is accessible through the
Internet and support many kinds of platform (operating system) and devices. With this type of application, Indonesian
Muslim citizens will have many options for inquiring halal information from LPPOM MUI.
To implement a highly available and a highly accessible system, we propose using Twitter as the base foundation.
This proposal is based on the following reasons:
Twitter is programmable through its public API (REST API v1.1 Resources, 2013). This API enables us to read
public tweets and to send tweets automatically using computer applications. This means that we can read
public tweets inquiring halal information using a computer application and we can also send tweets to respond
to these inquiries by using a computer application. With the use of computer applications, we eliminate the
need for any human administrator.
Twitter supports many kinds of applications/methods to access it. We can access Twitter using web browsers,
web browser extensions, desktop applications, smartphone applications, and even via SMS. This makes Twitter

accessible from any operating systems and devices. This is important because people will mostly be inquiring
halal information when they are going to buy a product or planning to eat in restaurant where access to the
Internet are available using smartphones.
The number of Twitter users grew every year and findings suggest it will continue to grow as users started to
leave Facebook (Meeker and Wu, 2013). This suggests that Twitter will constantly be used as a method for
exchanging and sharing information in the coming years. This way, using Twitter will help build a durable
system.
It is also important to understand that the convenience offered by the Internet and social media plays an important
role in improving participation. This is why the use of Twitter as a base foundation for communication will improve
user engagement in eHalal. However, it is important to also understand that users of the Internet and social media
expect to receive a fast, if not instant, response (Chang, 2012). This is why eHalal needs to be available for inquiries at
anytime because a system with slow response will be considered unreliable.
Twitter itself will only act as a gateway between LPPOM MUI and Indonesian Muslim citizens. LPPOM MUI will
use its official Twitter account, i.e. @halalindonesia, as this gateway. Both LPPOM MUI and Indonesian Muslim
citizens will communicate through this gateway. The crucial part is the application server provided by LPPOM MUI.
The application to automatically respond to halal information inquiries will be deployed in the application server.
This application server will communicate with @halalindonesia, while Indonesian Muslim citizens can use their own
Twitter accounts to communicate with @halalindonesia. The flow of communication will be as simple as the steps
below:
1. People will send tweets containing inquiries for halal information while also mentioning @halalindonesia.
2. The application server of LPPOM MUI will constantly check (read) for tweets mentioning @halalindonesia.
This application server will then process all tweets containing halal information inquiries and simply skipped
other irrelevant tweets.
3. The application server of LPPOM MUI will search for halal information of the product being inquired and then
it will send this search result in the form of tweets containing the halal information while also mentioning the
Twitter accout of the appropriate inquirer.
4. People will receive responses of their inquiries by checking tweets from @halalindonesia that mentions them.

Figure 2: The Conceptual Model of eHalal

The above model basically implements two of the necessary characteristics of the conceptual model for eHalal
system. The third one is clarity. Clarity means that the system should provide a specific and straightforward response for
halal information inquiries. Responses made for halal information inquiries on a certain product should not be jumbled
together with other products nor should it have ambiguous meaning.
For the eHalal system to achieve this, we need to determine the content of the inquiries and the content of the
responses. We need the contents to follow a certain pattern so that the eHalal system could be set (programmed) to
automatically captures every inquiries, searches for relevant results, and sends clear and unambiguous responses to
inquirers.
So there are two different tweets that we need to handle: inquiry tweets and response tweets. For the inquiry tweets,
we proposed this pattern:
@halalindonesia #tanyahalal [Product Name]$
The functionality of the pattern above are as follows:
@halalindonesia limits the inquiry tweets only to tweets mentioning @halalindonesia. If a tweet doesn't
mention @halalindonesia then it will not be considered an inquiry.
#tanyahalal further limits the inquiry tweets only to tweets mentioning @halalindonesia containing the hashtag

tanyahalal, which is Indonesian for askhalal.

ProductName contains the name of the product being inquired and are NOT limited to only a single word.
$ denotes the end sign. This limits the name of the product being inquired. Any words or characters that comes
after the $ sign will be ignored.
This pattern will be automatically and constantly scanned by the computer application running in the application
server of LPPOM MUI. Once it encounters a tweet that fits this pattern, the computer application will extract the name
of the product being inquired and search for relevant halal information of the product. After it has finished searching,
the computer application will send a response containing the search result.
The response tweets will be a bit more complex than the inquiry tweets because there are more than 1 possible
responses for every inquiry. Therefore, we propose these forms for the response tweets:
1. [Product Name] memiliki sertifikat halal yang valid, which loosely translates into [Product Name] has a
valid halal certificate.
2. [Product Name] memiliki sertifikat halal yang sudah kadaluarsa sejak tanggal [Expired Date], which loosely
translates into [Product Name] has a valid halal certificate, but it was expired on [Expired Date].
3. [Product Name] belum memiliki sertifikat halal. Coba gunakan kata kunci pencarian yang lain, which
loosely translates into [Product Name] has no valid halal certificate. Please use a different set of search
keywords.
The first and the second form proposed above is self-explanatory. The first form is a straightforward response for
products with valid halal certificates, while the second form is intended to provide a better explanation for products with
expired halal certificates. The second form is necessary to avoid confusion as to why a product could suddenly looses
its halal certificates.
The third form is also quite self-explanatory. This is the form of response that will be sent when searching for the
product being inquired returns no results which means no valid halal certificate. However, due to the fact that no
results can also mean that the inquirers used the wrong set of search keywords, we find it necessary to suggest the use
of a different set of search keywords.
All the forms of the response tweets that we mentioned above should be easy to understand. The only thing left to
handle is the case where there are more than 1 products that matched the product being inquired. If this is the case, we
proposed dividing it into 2 different cases:
1. If there are less than or equal to 5 matches, then we should respond by sending the halal information of all
matched products one-by-one. This means that if there are 5 matched products, then there will be 5 different
tweets sent as responses using the first form.
2. If there are more than 5 matches, then we should send a response similar to the third form. We proposed a
response with this form: Pencarian kurang spesifik. Gunakan kata kunci pencarian yang lebih spesifik, which
loosely translates to Too many results. Please use a more specific set of search keywords.
By handling the cases above, we have a complete combination of response for halal information inquiries. With
this, we'll be able to fulfill the clarity characteristic of the eHalal system.

Conclusion
The issue we're tackling is an important issue for Indonesian Muslim citizens. They need to have a reliable source
of halal information and the best option is the national authority that publishes halal certificates: LPPOM MUI. LPPOM
MUI should be able to come up with a reliable G2C system for answering halal information inquiries.
In previous sections, we've discussed characteristics of current services provided by LPPOM MUI to answer this
issue, which is the search feature in its official website and its official Twitter account. Unfortunately, based on our
findings, non of these services are considered reliable. The search feature proves to make ambiguous responses while
the official Twitter account (@halalindonesia) proves to provide limited responses against incoming inquiries.
To help eliminate these weaknesses, we propose the conceptual model of eHalal. Availability, accessibility, and
clarity are the key success factors of eHalal. To achieve availability and accessibility, eHalal will use the Internet and
Twitter as the foundation of its services. This system will be available at anytime and accessible from any kinds of
platforms (operating systems) and devices. In terms of clarity, eHalal will have certain forms of tweets to have a
consistent and easy-to-understand responses for halal information inquiries. If all these key success factors were
implemented, then LPPOM MUI will be able to provide a reliable source of halal information for Indonesian Muslim
citizens.

References
Chang, K. (2012). Digital Governance: New Technologies For Improving Public Service And Participation. International Review of Public
Administration, 17(2), 175. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1178926058?accountid=17242
Meeker, M., & Wu, L. (2013, May 29). 2013 Internet Trends. KPCB. Retrieved October 10, 2013, from http://www.kpcb.com/insights/2013-internettrends
REST API v1.1 Resources. (n.d.). Twitter. Retrieved October 14, 2013, from https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1