President Joko Widodo encourages local governments to apply digital technology to handle stunting cases. Sumedang Regency is one of the regencies that has implemented an electronic-based government system (SPBE) and AI to analyse databases in reducing stunting cases in the region. As a result, the stunting prevalence rate in Sumedang Regency has decreased in the last five years from 32.2% in 2018 to 8.27% in 2022.
For this reason, the President has appealed to other regencies/cities to replicate the implementation of the Sumedang Regency, as quoted by Minister of Health (Menkes) Budi Gunadi Sadikin, after a closed meeting chaired by President Joko Widodo at the Merdeka Palace, Central Jakarta.
“For stunting, the President suggested that it be determined under the coordination of the Vice President, the Coordinating Minister for PMK, the Head of the BKKBN, in coordination with MenPAN-RB, to choose, it could be 20, 30 or up to 50 regencies/cities that have good SPBE and high stunting scores. So, we can directly replicate what has been done in Sumedang,” Minister Budi explained.
In addition, Minister Budi asked the Head of State to instruct the Sumedang Regent Dony Ahmad Munir to be able to directly assist areas that still had a high number of stunting cases. President Jokowi has directed Dony to immediately to the region to help with replication. They need to help regents and mayors in areas with high stunting scores and immediately replicate the solution. He has instructed them to prioritise regent with sufficient SPBE value to repeat their success quickly.
Aside from an excellent electronic-based government system, Sumedang Regency also has an integrated business process and data system. The regency has successfully orchestrated the people, business processes, and electronic data systems into one. Therefore, Sumedang can perform in several other government programmes. The Sumedang Regent has also improved the poverty programme and enhanced the ease of giving permits programme.
Dony said that a technology-based application called the integrated stunting prevention system (Simpati) also contributed to handling stunting in Sumedang. Through this platform, all stakeholders can understand how to overcome stunting.
The application provides precise data and information, such as villages with high stunting prevalence rates, statistical data on children affected by stunting, and the causes of stunting in the villages. With the existing data, Dony said that the handling of stunting in each town would differ according to the obstacles faced.
“So, each village has obstacles, different stunting problems, then through artificial intelligence, we will give recommendations. So, the handling of stunting is intervened in each village differently. Therefore, we need collaboration and orchestration of all existing components to deal with stunting,” Dony added.
Furthermore, Dony said that the Simpati application would then be given to the government through the Ministry of Health to replicate it in other regions. According to him, during the meeting, the President asked him to tour each province to ensure the replication was running well.
Finally, Dony believes that policies, programmes, and activities designed by the government must be based on science and data so that they can then be managed using digital technology. In addition, collaboration with other parties is also needed to support the sustainability of the programme.
Sumedang provides the application in collaboration with one of Indonesia’s telecommunication providers. Then the regency gives training to all their Integrated Healthcare Center (Posyandu) cadres. The training gave the cadre knowledge on understanding stunting and using the applications. They also provide smartphones for each Posyandu. In total, they provide 1,705 smartphones for all Posyandu in Sumedang. However, Dony said that his party faced a few challenges during the training and mentoring process for Posyandu cadres. Thus, they open a call centre to assist them with the solution when facing an obstacle in the field.
