In Tangerang, Indonesia, civil-registration offices once drew long queues from before dawn. Some residents held their place not by standing there continuously, but by leaving sandals or motorcycle helmets in line. A 2024 Kompas account presented the city's online population-administration service as a direct response: applicants could upload their documents remotely and visit the office only to collect the completed papers.
The system covered national identity cards, family cards, children's identity cards and certificates connected with moving into or out of the city. The old queue had turned ordinary belongings into tokens of administrative order, each pair of sandals representing a person waiting elsewhere. Digitisation changed more than the application medium. It was intended to remove the need for residents to send a substitute object to claim a place on the pavement before sunrise.