Indonesia Seeks e-government Development Cooperation with UK

Jakarta – The governments of Indonesia and the United Kingdom (UK) are seeking to enhance digitalization cooperation for the development of technical capabilities for e-government.

According to the Deputy Minister of Communication and Informatics, Nezar Patria, the UK government is experienced in implementing e-government through gov.uk. Therefore, Indonesia can learn from the UK, Patria said.

"Indonesia must learn from those successes so that we don't have to repeat or experience the same mistakes," he stated in a statement on Saturday.

Patria said that his ministry has two tasks related to e-government implementation, namely building infrastructure and carrying out integration and consultation for interoperability of applications used by ministries, institutions, and local governments.

"Indonesia needs technical support supervision from countries that have successfully implemented e-government, one is the UK," he added.

He remarked that Indonesia has established cooperation with several parties, including foreign universities, to develop technical capabilities for e-governance.

One of the collaborations is with the Tony Blair Institute and concerns technical assistance, he continued.

"Later, there will be technical assistance cooperation to improve our capabilities to develop e-government in Indonesia," he said regarding the cooperation with the institute.

During a meeting with the UK's Minister of State for the Indo-Pacific, Anne-Marie Belinda Trevelyan, at the ministry's office in Jakarta on Thursday, Patria discussed increasing cooperation between Indonesia and the UK.

Trevelyan invited the Indonesian government to attend a meeting in the UK in June to discuss digitalization.

According to Patria, the two parties have agreed to boost joint action, especially to strengthen the telecommunications infrastructure in Indonesia as well as to build cooperation related to education, particularly capacity improvement.