Government to Bridge Digital Divide In Rural Areas

Ismira Lutfia, The Jakarta Globe, January 5, 2009 

In its 2009 budget, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has plans to develop a rural telecommunications network to reduce the digital divide between urban areas and outlying regions. 

Muhammad Nuh, minister of communication and information technology, said last week that the Universal Service Obligation program would help provide better telecommunications infrastructure and widen access to information and communications technology. 

“The program has been delayed twice, and it will ensure a maximum use of the budget if we can start it as soon as possible,” Nuh said, adding that his office would announce the winner for the USO project tender in early 2009. 

He said during a year-end press conference that the program would boost information technology penetration, and that it would not only provide telecommunication connections in rural areas where such service was now unavailable, but would also serve as the first step toward securing Internet access. 

“If the program goes smoothly, this will help to increase the public’s electronic literacy,” Nuh said, adding that the technology could also be used to access information in other aspects of life such as education, health and business, in addition to making electronic transactions possible. 

Nuh also said that his ministry had spent 74.45 percent of its Rp 1.3 trillion ($120 million) budget for 2008. 

“We have managed to maximize the use of our budget by being efficient in various expenses,” Nuh told reporters, adding that reduced electricity and Internet connection costs contributed to decreased expenditures. 

The minister said that merging similar or supporting activities between different working units within the ministry had also helped to streamline the budget, and that administrative procedures to withdraw financing money were now more efficient. 

Gatot S. Dewa Broto, a ministry spokesman, said that delays in withdrawing money had sometimes left projects unfinished and the budget unspent. 

“Spending the budget reflects how we conduct our activities, but it seems impossible that 100 percent of the budget can be spent,” Nuh said. 

He said that the research and development unit was the biggest spender of seven working units in the ministry, using up 85.6 percent of its budget. The post and telecommunications unit spent 81.6 percent, the inspectorate general 77.8 percent, the telematics application unit 71.7 percent, the secretariat general 70.9 percent, the public information body 69 percent and the communications and information dissemination unit 61 percent. 

Gatot said the ministry did not handle the budget by itself and therefore the remaining 25.6 percent was still with the State Treasurer. 

Nuh said that one of the expenditures in the budget was for producing regulations in cooperation with legislators from the House of Representatives. The main achievement in this partnership, he said, were the passage of two laws, on information and electronic transactions, or ITE, and on freedom of information, or KIP. 

The ITE law was passed in March while the KIP law was passed in April. Both laws have been met with strong opposition from activists and the media, who say some clauses in the laws could jeopardize the freedom of expression and information. 

The KIP law is considered a breakthrough in the country’s governance reform process and made Indonesia the seventh country in Asia to enact such a law. 

It obliges all bodies funded by taxpayer money to regularly disclose and update information regarding their institutions, and to provide easy access to information for those who request it.