UN Global Pulse and the Ministry of National Development Planning joined forces to host the International Conference of Data Revolution for Policy Makers in Jakarta last February 21st and 22nd to tackle issues on Indonesia’s ability to utilize data for policy making, the extent to which data innovation and analytics can be used for policy making, and the challenges that come with it.
Participants of the said conference recognized the fact that the largest economy in the Southeast Asia is also one of the leading countries in the region that produce social data on a daily basis with about 132.7 million internet users. In that regard, they understand that the utilization of various data sources, digital and social data included, can aid the Indonesian government to expedite decisions, as well as to monitor and evaluate current policies.
Jakarta, Indonesia
To address issues on data gap and standardization in the country, the government recently implemented the SatuData initiative, which Indonesian President Joko Widodo supports. The initiative targets to standardize data and make it both accessible and available in an open data format.
Widodo himself is not a stranger to social data as he appears to be a social media expert with active accounts in various platforms including YouTube, where he has over 100,000 subscribers to his personal videos that include sports and food-related content. The Indonesian President also maintains an Instagram account, where has nearly three million followers.