Bridging Digital Divide In Indonesia

Bridging Digital Divide in Indonesia1 By : Achmad Zaky Syaifudin

Many people, experts, and countries perceive that digital divide issue is about technology. If we can have access of technology we can close the digital divide. In my opinion, it's absolutely wrong. Digital divide substantially is about information issue. We have seen that people with more information will have more knowledge and it make us can compete with the others. So, technology is just a tool. Whatever tool we use to close digital divide if we are not focus on the substantial issues then it will be failed. I've doing research how many countries solve this problem like that. For example One Laptop Per Child program. Is that you know what happen when we give children a laptop? They play game. I hope we realize this things that digital divide always connected to information access. The solution is how our communities can get access of information more. We have many technologies to supply information to all people around Indonesia. Television, Radio, Cell Phone, Internet, PC are some of them. The Data from our team shows that Television and Radio penetration in Indonesia is very broad, almost household have a television. The infrastructure is well but we must research on the content. Is it belong to good information or bad information? all of stakeholder of our country must assure that television can be good media that inform optimistic message and insight to people of our country. For Cell Phone, we have data that its user reaches almost half of population in Indonesia. It's very huge potential technology will be used by our people to access information. What we will concern with these things is regulate the price. Therefore people in rural area can afford and use it well. Internet/PC penetration will be the most our concern. The data released that people access to both of technology is insignificant, not more that 10% of population. Whereas we know that it gives many advantages compared with other technologies (television, radio, and cell phone). With it, children can access many things in the world. They can do research through internet, or just have relationship with their friends in other countries. Internet/PC makes it possible now. We must think strategically how Internet/PC can penetrate throughout area in Indonesia especially rural area. We also consider that our budget is limited. Definitely, we will not use One Laptop Per Child solution because it’s not effective and full of cost. 1

This essay was written to be proposed in Harvard National Model United Nations 2009 ITB Selection

One of our responsibilities is building the internet infrastructure. We will build internet infrastructure across area in Indonesia. We hope with it all of area can have access internet easily. To succeed this program we will cooperate with private sector. They must deal with these things because they will take advantages if the infrastructure built. We classified internet user into two groups, they are personal user and group user. Data show that personal user can be reach only by rich household. They are not our concern anymore. We will concern to poor household with access internet in group like in school, internet café, campus, library, etc. Our problem is how to assure that every school has access of internet. Because the budget is limited, we will use cross subsidy between rich household and poor household. We will raise taxes of technology product that usually bought by rich family. Then it will be used to subsidized building PC and internet facility in every school in Indonesia. We realize that we can’t face these issues by ourselves. We have to encourage private sector and nonprofit organization (NGO) to have more concern with it. We will carry on Regulation to private sector that give advantages to them if they can help us handle digital divide issues. One of regulation that have we thought is tax cost cutting. Their taxes will cut off if they have program against the digital divide. Not just to build infrastructure, digital divide is about content. How if we have built infrastructure and there is lack of content. Content is the most important things beside the infrastructure. No content means useless infrastructure. We also encourage all of public and private sector to make content through the internet. Our Educational System must use internet based fully. Student all over Indonesia should save their works on the internet so other students have access on it too. We hope with this mechanism student can study effectively. All of these programs must work effectively. We will encourage all of Government staff to support these programs. They must know how important this program to their country. If we aspire to be Great Country we must have Great People too. It needs knowledge/information to create Great People. The conclusion is digital divide issues have many relation with two things, infrastructure and content. How can infrastructure reach and how can content access by all of people. These two issues are very important to close digital divide. We need a regulation to engage private sector because it is not just government responsibility. Moreover the budget of our country is very limited. The engagement of private sector to succeed our program is very important.