Of the four pillars of the digital society index, empowerment has the lowest national average score of 22.06.
Heaptalk, Jakarta — The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology revealed that Indonesia’s digital society index (IMD) reached a score of 37.8 on a scale of 1-100. This value indicates that Indonesia still needs to make numerous improvements in the four index pillars.
The four IMD pillars consist of infrastructure and ecosystem (40.24), digital skills (49.35), empowerment (22.06), and employment (40.35). The measurement is carried out through primary and secondary data collection from 514 cities/districts throughout Indonesia.
This index plays an important role in accelerating Indonesia’s digital transformation agenda, specifically for the pillars of a digital society. IMD Indonesia is a follow-up to the country’s initiative in the G20 Presidency, namely compiling a digital literacy and digital skill toolkit. The document can be used by G-20 countries to measure the condition of literacy and digital skills in their respective countries. This toolkit has been submitted as one of the deliverables at the digital economy working group forum and has been well received by member countries.
In his remarks, Minister of Communication and Information Technology Johnny G. Plate conveyed the world’s people are increasingly digitalized currently, including in the Asia Pacific region 1.3 billion people have used mobile internet in 2022, showing an increase of 200 million from the previous year of 1. 1 billion people.
Compared to other Asian countries, the internet penetration rate in Indonesia reached 77% or around 210 million of the total population in 2022. This position shows that the country still has space for the growth of internet adoption.
Meanwhile, looking at the ASEAN digital community integration index for 2021, particularly for the aspect of digital skills and talent, Indonesia is still slightly below the average score for the region. To anticipate the potential of 149 million new jobs in the digital sector by 2025, Johnny delivered that Indonesia needs to boost the development of digital talent, specifically for skills including software development, cloud and data, data analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
“With a projected Indonesian internet penetration rate of 83% in 2026 or the equivalent of nearly 240 million internet users, the implementation of digital talent development programs and policies in Indonesia is expected to increase contribution to national GDP in 2030 up to around US%284-285 billion or grew by around 16%,” said Johnny in Jakarta (12/20).
Launching several programs to enhance digital human resources
Johnny emphasized that the three pillars go far beyond the empowerment pillar. He asked all ministries and institutions of the digital ecosystem to amplify empowerment as it has the lowest national average score. Johnny said, “We need to make improvements in multiple aspects related to digital society and specifically digital empowerment. With less empowerment, we will get fewer benefits.”
Aligned with President Joko Widodo’s direction, the government is boosting the development of upstream digital or ICT infrastructure more equally throughout the country. Currently, Johnny delivered that the government has pushed MSMEs from 8 million to 21 million. “We are projecting 30 million at the end of this cabinet period. But once again, empowerment still needs attention,” voiced Johnny.
Further, based on several studies, Indonesia contributes to 42% of ASEAN’s digital economy. Therefore, Johnny emphasized the importance of collaboration of all stakeholders including regional heads, heads of regional departments, and industry players to help scale up the empowerment pillar.
The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology itself has launched several programs to enhance digital human resources. In 2021, the ministry organized basic and intermediate digital skills training for 12.5 million people covering four important curricula.
Continued in 2022, the Ministry held basic digital skills training for 5.5 million participants and intermediate skills training for 200 thousand participants. Intermediate skills include cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, machine learning, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, and the metaverse
