Going Counterless Is Not the Finish Line for Perak’s Local Councils
By Ahmad Safwan
Founder of ShiftPerak
Malaysia’s local authorities are moving quickly towards digital service delivery. KPKT has been pushing the Counterless City concept since 2023, supported by platforms such as PBTPay, PBTCare, ePBT and OSC 3.0 Plus. The ministry says PBT digital transformation has contributed to more than RM1.5 billion in additional revenue collection over five years, while also reducing operating costs and saving people’s time.
That is meaningful progress. More payments can happen online. Applications can be submitted digitally. Complaints can be lodged through mobile channels. Development approvals can move through standardised online processes.
But going counterless should not be treated as the finish line. The more important question is:
Once the counter disappears, does the whole service actually become better?
That is where digital maturity begins.
Counterless Is About Access.
Digital Maturity Is About the Whole Experience.
Moving a service online removes one type of friction. A resident may no longer need to travel to the council office, take a number, wait at the counter and make a basic payment in person.
That matters. But a service can be online and still be:
Those are not the same thing.
A Digital Service Is Only Useful If People Can Actually Use It
This is where user experience becomes critical. A government service should not be considered successful merely because an application or website exists. The digital alternative has to work reliably.
PBTPay provides a useful example. The platform is intended to centralise services such as assessment tax, compounds, rentals, bills, OSC 3.0 Plus and eLesen.
But recent public reviews repeatedly describe problems around registration, login, checking bills, empty carts, payment failures, loading times and timeouts.
That does not mean every PBTPay user has a poor experience. But such persistent public feedback should matter.
PBTPay
Apple App Store Rating
From 400+ ratings
Making a service digital is not enough if completing the service becomes another source of frustration.
If the physical counter disappears but the replacement digital journey creates new friction, the burden has not really been removed. It has moved from the counter to the screen.
Adoption Is Part of Digital Maturity Too
The same question applies to adoption. PBTCare, formerly known as i-Tegur, is positioned as a mobile channel for people to submit complaints to local authorities, including location and photographic information. KPKT also describes it as a way to support complaint monitoring and management through a common system.
Yet Google Play currently shows only 10K+ downloads.
That figure alone does not tell us whether PBTCare has succeeded or failed. People may still use SISPAA, council websites, telephone calls, WhatsApp, physical counters or other channels. But it does raise an important question:
If a public digital channel exists, is it useful, trusted, easy enough and well-integrated enough for people to choose it?
Digital adoption should therefore be measured alongside digital availability. A system nobody wants to use does not create much digital value.
Counterless Does Not Mean Connected
There is another issue. Malaysia already has multiple digital local-government systems. JKT’s own online-services portal separately lists PBT Pay, OSC, eLesen, SISPAA and the i-Tegur complaint channel, among other systems.
Each may perform a legitimate function. But from the user’s perspective, this can still mean navigating different:
That creates a digital environment built around individual systems rather than the overall experience. The next maturity stage should therefore not be:
It should be:
The Real Journey Starts Before the Transaction
A resident does not usually begin with: “I want to use PBTPay.”
They begin with what they actually need to accomplish:
A mature digital experience should therefore be designed around the journey, not the name of the system. The journey could look like:
If only one stage of that journey is digital, the wider experience can still be fragmented.
User Experience Should Become a Core PBT KPI
Local-government digitalisation is often discussed in terms of systems launched, transactions completed, services moved online, revenue collected, and processing times. Those are useful.
But digital maturity should also measure whether people can actually use the service successfully. Useful indicators could include:
Web-Based Is Not the Problem
Some of these systems are web-based rather than mobile-first. That is not automatically a weakness. A well-designed responsive website can be better than forcing people to install another application.
The real issue is whether the experience works well across the devices people actually use. A web service can be excellent. An app can be terrible. And vice versa.
The maturity question should not be:
“Does every PBT service have an app?”
It should be:
Can the user complete the journey easily, reliably and consistently on the most appropriate channel?
Digital Services Should Reduce Work on Both Sides
A good digital service should not only make things easier for the resident. It should also reduce unnecessary work inside the council.
A polished front end can hide a manual back end if you don’t reduce:
Someone may submit something online, but if an officer has to print it, re-enter it, email another department, and manually update the status… the process has not matured.
Complaint Closure Should Be About Outcomes, Not Only Workflow
Complaints are an especially good example. Digital systems make it easier to record, assign and track cases. But there is an important distinction between the council completing an internal action and the resident’s underlying problem actually being resolved.
The Administrative Workflow
Administratively complete, but is the problem solved?
The Mature Outcome Model
A closed ticket is not automatically a solved problem.
Digitalisation Should Help Councils Recognise Patterns
Every digital interaction creates useful information. Payments. Applications. Complaints. Approvals. Licences. The value is not just processing those transactions faster. Over time, the data can help councils understand what is actually happening in their areas.
Businesses Experience the Same Problem
Local councils also play an important role in the business environment. For a business, poor digital experience has a direct economic cost. If an application is difficult to understand or repeatedly rejected, the result can be:
The next step should be to keep asking: Does the digital system reduce the total effort required to get the outcome? Not merely: Was the application submitted online?
The Digital Maturity Ladder for Local Councils
A better way to think about PBT transformation is as a progression.
Online Availability
Put individual transactions online.
Usability and Reliability
Make sure people can actually complete them successfully.
Adoption
Ensure the intended users know about the service, trust it and choose to use it.
Integration
Connect identity, information, payments, status and workflows where appropriate.
Operational Improvement
Redesign the internal process, not just the front end.
Verified Outcomes
Measure whether the user’s actual problem or objective was resolved.
Continuous Improvement
Use transaction data, complaints and feedback to improve future services and decisions.
Going counterless is an important milestone near the beginning of that journey.
It is not the end.
AI Should Improve the Journey, Not Decorate It
KPKT is also pushing greater use of smart technology as part of PBT transformation. There are useful opportunities for AI and analytics. But AI should be applied after the underlying journey is understood.
Fix the journey first. Use AI where it genuinely removes friction.
What would be less useful is simply adding an AI chatbot on top of a difficult process.
The Finish Line Is Not “No Counter”
There is real value in reducing unnecessary physical transactions. Counterless services can save time, lower costs and make government more accessible. But the absence of a counter does not automatically mean the presence of a good digital service.
A digitally mature local council should aim for something more ambitious:
- A resident can complete what they need without unnecessary effort.
- A business can understand and move through the process with confidence.
- An officer has better information and less repetitive work.
- A complaint is measured by whether the problem was actually resolved.
- Different systems feel increasingly like one local-government experience.
- Data continuously makes the service better.
That is the next stage. Going counterless is progress. But for Perak’s local councils, the real finish line should be services that are reliable, connected, easy to use and measured by outcomes rather than simply by whether they have moved online.
About the Author
Ahmad Safwan
Founder, ShiftPerak
Safwan writes about Perak’s digital maturity, economic development and how technology can create better outcomes for people, businesses and government.
Where Should Perak’s PBTs Go Next?
If you work in local government, technology, business, urban development or community services in Perak, I’d be interested to hear where you see the biggest opportunity for the next stage of PBT digitalisation.