The objective of BAKTI’s Inclusive Digital Ecosystem Actions for SDG initiative is to bridge the digital gap by utilisation of ICT infrastructure and creation of digital ecosystems that serve and address the communities’ needs in remote and underdeveloped regions in Indonesia. However, Indonesia’s vast and diverse cultural, economic, and social structures pose a huge challenge since there is no one-size-fits-all solution. As such, BAKTI plays an important role as the ecosystem enabler, catalyst and accelerator that accumulates experiences and lessons learned in developing the most suitable digital ecosystem initiatives for communities in remote and underdeveloped regions. Adopting strategic approach of localised digital ecosystem initiatives based on strategic partnership, BAKTI had implemented 50 digital ecosystem initiatives in four priority sectors during 2019-2022 that are aligned with the national strategic plan of the Ministry of Communication and Informatics of Indonesia. These four priority sectors consist of: education and literacy digital, tourism, MSMEs (micro, small, and medium enterprises), healthcare and e-government. Through these inclusive digital ecosystem activities, a total of approximately 340.000 thousand rural community members become direct beneficiaries and around 3.6 million community members indirectly benefited from the initiatives. BAKTI has served 677 villages across 35 regencies in Indonesia and collaborated with approximately 350 strategic partners, from local governments, startups and private sectors, community youth and leaders, and international organisations. To date, these activities have demonstrated tangible impacts among the communities in remote and underdeveloped regions in Indonesia, by empowering women entrepreneurs, supporting disability groups, and inspiring local heroes to amplify the digital ecosystem actions with their community groups.

https://www.baktikominfo.id/

• Indonesia

• Youth
• Older persons
• Women
• Indigenous and nomadic peoples
• People with disabilities
• The unemployed
• The poor
• Remote and rural communities

BAKTI’s digital ecosystem serves as a benchmark in the culmination of a network that can support the consistent impact of the government to bridge inequalities and meaningfully provide change to society. This effort in merging technology and infrastructure serves as the cornerstone in the development of a digital ecosystem through the principles of innovation and transparency by facilitating a STRATEGIC ALLIANCE between a variety of stakeholders ranging from the public, private and social sectors. As an example, looking at BAKTI’s digital ecosystem in education. Initially BAKTI IDEA4SDG targeted teachers in two underdeveloped regencies and recognized the challenge of introducing technology into the learning process. We identified and collaborated with national startup (Ruangguru) that shares similar goal in delivering education services for disadvantaged areas in Indonesia. Ruangguru brought to the table the experiences of delivering distance learning via their online platform and how to engage with teachers whereas BAKTI IDEA4SDG offered insights and lessons learned on developing digital ecosystem strategy in remote areas. Aligning the project performance measurement with the established national competency standard by the Ministry of Education also help to bridge the initiative with the national priority and policy. After the first-year implementation, we learned that a more systemic intervention is needed. The initiative needs to involve capacity building for students themselves to achieve greater impact. In the second year, we also included students as beneficiaries of the program. Leveraging the online platform for students by Ruangguru, we also engaged virtual tour operators in introducing campus environment to the students in remote and underdeveloped regions. As a result, at least 20% of the total teacher beneficiaries of the program are currently active as local champions who continue to participate in the ministry’s program and disseminate their knowledge to other teachers in their region.

BAKTI’s mission and mandate in providing ICT infrastructure and building inclusive digital ecosystems particularly in the remote and underdeveloped regions in Indonesia is stipulated in the Ministry of ICT Regulations No. 3/2018. The regulation cements BAKTI's role as the prominent government entity that drives the mission to bridge digital gap by applying two approaches, top-down and bottom-up approach. With these approaches, BAKTI lay the foundation for sustainability as it does not only stop at providing infrastructure, but it also strives to develop the suitable digital ecosystem initiatives that deliver real impact to the communities in the remote and underdeveloped regions. Due to its focus and mission to serve the under-served communities, BAKTI collect and manage the knowledge gained from its experiences of implementing various digital ecosystem initiatives. This enables BAKTI to be adaptive in designing innovative ways to ensure optimisation of the ICT infrastructure for the benefit of the local communities. The accumulated knowledge is also transferred to different stakeholders since BAKTI leverages partnership and collaboration with multi-stakeholders in building the digital ecosystems. BAKTI always ensure that the digital ecosystem initiative is aligned with the national priority and policies, coordinate with the relevant mandated government agencies to ensure that the success of the initiative would be taken up and scaled up by the relevant agencies. Partners from private, civil society and local youth are also empowered to continue developing the seeds of digital ecosystem that BAKTI has orchestrated. The core of digital ecosystem is based on a shared goal with their complementing capabilities to learn, adapt and innovate together hence, enabling them to address the wicked social and economic problems faced by the communities in remote and underdeveloped areas. Hence, sustainability is underlined through the baseline of cooperation, coordination and commitments that have been formalised.

- Freedom: Using bottom-up approach, BAKTI IDEA4SDG project allows our stakeholders and rural communities to identify significant drivers that motivate them to develop their own unique digital ecosystem actions - Quality: Leveraging BAKTI's main role in bringing connectivity infrastructure to the rural areas, our target communities have the privilege to experience not only the best digital solutions available but also tailor-made to ensure compatibility with the digital devices and digital skills of the people - Solidarity and Tolerance: Promoting our well-known cultural value of "gotong-royong", BAKTI IDEA4SDG promotes the principle of 'no one left behind' when designing and implementing our digital ecosystem actions in the rural communities. This is reflected in our careful planning phase whereby we collect samplings via surveys to understand the socioeconomic and demographic landscape before rolling out initiatives - Shared responsibility: BAKTI IDEA4SDG emphasise the importance of ownership to ensure sustainability of the project in the targeted areas. Our close engagement with local governments and local/indigenous heroes is purposely established to allow BAKTI to share the progress and lesson learnt out of our initiatives implementation. - Respect for nature: Since most BAKTI IDEA4SDG initiatives, especially the tourism sectors, are implemented in pristine area where indigenous communities reside, participants are given educational training and capacity building to promote the conservation of environment and biodiversity