The Indonesian government is currently regulating the protection of personal data of Indonesian people on digital platforms, particularly the users of social media platforms.
According to a recent report, the purpose of the bill is to guarantee that the data pertaining to the personal data of Indonesians will exist only within Indonesia and will be protected by the government.
This will prohibit the data from being made available overseas.
The protection of personal data is still in the preparation stage in the Draft Law (RUU) and will await the ratification of the DPR-RI.
Issues on personal data are indeed being contested by various countries. Indonesia recognises the need to have its own set of regulations.
Hopefully, this bill will achieve the goal of the government, which is to protect the personal data of each citizen in the future.
The Expert Staff of the Minister of Communication and Information in the Field of Law reminded that any kind of information accessed and disseminated through social media platforms is automatically submitted to the digital platform being used.
For instance, once people use digital technology applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook or Google, they actually submit data about their daily activities to the platform.
Thus, the digital platforms end up knowing the activities of the people, wherever they may be. Because of this, collective data gathered for all platform users end up being considered as Big Data.
The Ministry’s Expert Staff concluded that the user’s behaviour in the digital world has already been algorithmically recorded by technology.
This, therefore, calls for protection of personal data through the regulation of the personal data protection bill.
Once the bill is discussed and approved, there would be no need to create a new commission to handle this.
The responsibility of looking after the personal data protection of the Indonesian people falls on the shoulders of the authority of the public information disclosure commission.
They will be in charge of public information disclosure as well as the identification of what data will be protected.
Aside from the protection of personal data through laws, there is also a need for digital literacy as digitisation has changed a lot of aspects in the lives of the people.
One of the Ministry’s programs, called SiBerkreasi, is aimed to address the development of digital technology through socialisation.
SiBerkreasi is a national movement to overcome the threat of the greatest potential danger currently being faced by Indonesia, which is the spread of negative content through the internet.
Countermeasures are carried out by disseminating digital literacy to various sectors, particularly through education. Inclusion of digital literacy material into the formal curriculum is being encouraged.
This movement also urges people to actively participate in spreading positive content through the internet.
