Hence, we must encourage and guide village officers on differentiating data and facts in practice, thus they can be used as a basis for policy-making.
Jakarta (ANTARA) - National Development Planning (PPN) Minister and Head of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) Suharso Monoarfa has called for the use of statistical data for village development, saying villages are the drivers of national development.

"(Development) planning must be conducted since the early stage, which is at the village level. Thus, we can get a plan which is according to evidence, facts, and data," he said at the Stats-enthusiast Village (Desa Cantik) Award, themed "Utilizing Data Towards Prosperity", here on Monday.

Villages should not remain development objects anymore, he remarked. They must become the subjects of development and drive the improvement of people's welfare, he said.

Village development policies will be more effective if they are made based on complete and accurate data, he observed. Hence, it is necessary to increase village capacity, he added.

However, local governments are facing a number of challenges in this regard, such as low involvement of villages in collecting data as well as the need for improving the quality and capacity of human resources managing the data, he noted.

The challenges are arising because of low literacy when it comes to village data, which affects the commitment of the rural government to optimizing data usage in development policy-making, he said.

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Hence, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) is making efforts to increase village capacity in using data for development policies through the Desa Cantik program, as the agency has been mandated to improve data literacy in accordance with Law Number 16/1997 concerning Statistics, he said.

The program aims to improve the competence of village officials in managing and utilizing data to make village development plans more efficient, he informed.

In addition, it strives to realize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Number 17 by developing partnerships between villages and BPS in data provision, he added.

"Village administrators must have complete and accurate data on various aspects of their regions, thus the programs run by them will become more effective," Monoarfa said.

Furthermore, the Desa Cantik program is in line with three Electronic-based Governance System (SPBE) frameworks, he added.

They comprise increasing digital literacy and digital data awareness at the village level, expediting the realization of One Indonesia Data, which is data standardization conducted by BPS, as well as establishing government’s Big Data and implementing artificial intelligence in the governmental sector, he said.

"Hence, we must encourage and guide village officers on differentiating data and facts in practice, thus they can be used as a basis for policy-making," the minister added.

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Translator: Astrid Habibah, Uyu Liman
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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