Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Informatics has released the Indonesian Digital Society Index (IDSI) 2022. IDSI is built of four central pillars: infrastructure and ecosystem, digital skills, empowerment, and job creation as the fourth.
According to the IDSI 2022 results, one of Indonesia’s challenges is related to the empowerment pillar. As a result, the government will implement a programme to uplift downstream empowerment to increase and improve the productivity of digital technology.
“We have developed massive fibre optics, fibre links, microwave links, satellites and the Base Transceiver Station. However, the government must balance development in the upstream digital infrastructure sector with downstream digital infrastructure utilisation and development in Indonesia,” said Johnny G. Plate, Minister of Communication, and Informatics.
According to Johnny, the government is currently attempting to balance the development of digital infrastructure through community involvement. In line with this, the government promotes programmes such as Proud to be Made in Indonesia, Travel Only in Indonesia, and all policies aimed at empowering and utilising digital infrastructure.
Johnny discusses the findings of the first year of the IDSI survey, which revealed that the community index in Indonesia was 37.8 on a scale of 1 to 100. Another issue to address is the vast differences between regions. According to a survey conducted in 514 regencies and cities, the Ministry of Communication and Informatics discovered a wide gap in Indonesia’s digital society index. The next challenge is to figure out how to make the Indonesian digital community index more evenly distributed throughout the country.
Digital transformation is one of the agenda items on which G20 leaders are focused, and it is addressed in the Bali Declaration. In addition, the IDSI 2022 report is a follow-up action to the Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG) recommendation of the G20 Indonesia Presidency, namely The G20 Toolkit for Measuring Digital Skills and Digital Literacies: A Compilation of Reports.
To empower digital transformation for local traders, Indonesia has set a goal of digitising 1,000 traditional markets and one million MSMEs. There are currently 2,047 traditional markets that use local market websites through the Trade Facility Information System (TFIS), ten traditional markets that use digital marketing, and 51 conventional markets that operate QRIS for non-cash transactions.
Additionally, e-retribution has been implemented by local MSMEs and traditional traders in 326 traditional markets in 42 sub-districts, with 106,702 local traders. Along with digitalising the conventional market, 9.7 million MSME traders have used QRIS to conduct non-cash transactions.
The government of Indonesia’s digitalisation efforts have helped the country reach IDR980 trillion (US$ 63 billion), or 5.7% of GDP, by 2021. Indonesia’s GDP is expected to reach IDR24 trillion (US$1.5 trillion) in 2030, with the digital economy accounting for 18% of GDP, or approximately IDR4,531 trillion (US$ 290 million).
Nonetheless, Indonesia recognises the digital divide between industry demand and available talent. As a result, the government took action to meet the demand for digital talent in the financial technology sector by developing three skill training segments. The first layer consists of fintech fundamental skills. Second, there will be a training segment for young or recent college graduates. Third, in the top part, is a digital leadership academy.
The first segment of basic skills training covers fundamental fintech knowledge. The Ministry of Communication and Informatics encourages youth and university graduates to develop fintech using locally based digital technology in the medium segment. At the same time, the top leadership segment, the Digital Leadership Academy (DLA) training, is aimed at leaders at the Ministry Echelon III level.
