Digitally Competent Workers Key for Making Indonesia 4.0 Goal

JAKARTA – Entering the Industry 4.0 era, the government is determined to improve the competence of its workforce and human resources in accordance with the priority strategy outlined in the Making Indonesia 4.0 roadmap.

To achieve this target, two government institutions, namely the Industry Ministry's (Kemenperin) Industrial Human Resources Development Agency (BPSDMI) and the Communication and Information Ministry's (Kemenkominfo) Human Resources Research and Development Agency (Balitbang SDM), have partnered together to sign two memorandums of understanding (MOU), namely on the development of industrial human resources, communication, and informatics and industrial human resources development in the digital field.

"The partnership between these two institutions will definitely stimulate the implementation of Industry 4.0 methods in various sectors and will also become the benchmark for various ministries and agencies to develop a more tech-savvy workforce," the head of the Kemenperin's BPSDMI, Arus Gunawan said in a written statement on Tuesday (8/31).

Arus added that digitalization is the main factor in ensuring the development of digitally competent workers in Indonesia's public sector, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic of the past two years. This is vital due to the fact that the pandemic has helped increase the number of digital businesses in Indonesia by 50%.

This partnership is in line with the government's targets outlined in its Making Indonesia 4.0 roadmap on opening up to 7 million to 19 million new jobs in both the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors by 2030. Also, the amount of digitally competent workers needed by domestic industries is at around 600,000 every year.

"However, there needs to be improvements, specifically on the aspect of technological expertise and mastery, which is crucial in determining competitiveness levels," Arus added.

Furthermore, this partnership is expected to encourage the fulfillment of human resource needs in the fields of information and communication technology for the domestic industry, in line with the competencies and expertise needed at this time.

Meanwhile, the head of the Kemenkominfo's Balitbang SDM, Hary Budiarto, noted that this partnership will not only help increase the quality and amount of digitally competent workers, but will also help create a human resource ecosystem that is more in tune with the needs of industries, by synergizing their IT training programs.  

"This partnership will synergize both agencies' leading training programs, including the Balitbang SDM's digital talent scholarships (DTS) and the BPSDMI's 3 in 1 training, Diploma Equivalency and Digital Capability Center programs," he explained.

All DTS program graduates will have the chance to participate in industrial training programs lead by the BPSDMI. "The DTS program is a leading government program to develop digitally competent talent for the purpose of elevating Indonesia's digital competitiveness through reskilling and upskilling methods to fulfill the vision of achieving Industry 4.0 targets in the future," Hary added.

"The DTS program has eight different academic programs and offers a range of different training modules".

Adding to this, the Kemenkominfo will also provide an online marketplace job portal, the Kominfo Alumni Certification Monitoring System, to help connect DTS program graduates with business and industry actors.