Watch Out! Indef Reminds The Potential Of Abandoned Algorithm Hill Projects Such As Kertajati Airport

Illustration. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - Head of the Center of Innovation and Digital Economy Indef Nailul Huda said the Algorithm Hill project in Sukabumi, West Java, which is predicted to be the Indonesian Silicon Valley could potentially stall. It is like Kertajati Airport from a commercial airport to an aircraft repair shop.

Furthermore, Huda said that the potential for contracting could occur if various existing problems were not resolved first. However, the government is actually building new infrastructure.

"Various fundamental problems must be fixed first because the algorithm hill has a very high potential to stall and it could be like other projects whose utilization is not optimal, such as Kertajati Airport which is only an aircraft repair shop," he said in a virtual discussion, Thursday, April 15.

Huda said the first problem that had to be resolved was the very low level of the research and development ecosystem in Indonesia. Based on data from Unesco 2021, the proportion of R&D funds to GDP in total is still around 0.24 percent. This figure is still far behind Singapore's 2.22 percent.

In addition, said Huda, there are still very few high-tech products from Indonesia. Based on data from the World Bank, exports of manufactured products in Indonesia have tended to decline in trend when measuring since 2011. In fact, Indonesia's innovation is in the fourth-worst ranking in ASEAN. Indonesia's ICOR is also at 6.7.

Second, said Huda, the human resources (HR) in Indonesia are still insufficient to enter Industry 4.0. According to him, this is reflected in the very low number of Indonesian researchers, namely 216 out of 1 million population.

In fact, said Huda, the proportion of Indonesians who are skilled in computer programming is still very low, only 3.5 percent of the young and adult population. This figure is only superior to Thailand and the Philippines. Not to mention the problem of Indonesia's PISA value which is still lagging behind that of Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.

Finally, said Huda, the problem of digital inequality is still high in terms of expertise and use of digital products. And, according to him, there are still many villages outside Java that have difficulty getting signal access, especially in Maluku and Papua. In fact, there is more than 70 percent of villages that have not received a good cellular signal.

"We can conclude that Algolritma Hill or Silicon Valley in the Indonesian style is only a physical development program but it has not raised the context of innovation. There are no State-Owned Enterprises from the ICT sector but construction," he said.