Our micro, small, and medium enterprises cannot survive in the future if we do not prepare them to have basic digital skills.Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Communication and Informatics Ministry (Kominfo) will continue the digital talent development program in 2022 to expedite national digital transformation, Minister Johnny G. Plate has said.
The program will start by developing basic skills, he informed.
"The primary attempt is introducing digitization to the community. There are 270 million Indonesians; however, only a very few of them understand digitization," he said at an online event on ‘Digitizing Indonesia: Kominfo’s 2021 Retrospection and 2022 Outlook’ on Tuesday.
Without involving all people in the digital space, the established information and communication technology infrastructure cannot be used optimally, he added.
Hence, the ministry is striving to develop national digital talent through the National Digital Literacy Movement, which was awarded the 2020 World Summit on the Information Society Prize by the International Telecommunication Union.
In 2021, Kominfo carried out the program for around 12.5 million people with four basic curricula covering digital skills, digital ethics, digital safety, and digital culture, Plate said.
"For 2021, the program is almost one hundred percent completed. We will continue it in 2022 with the same number of participants," the minister informed.
He said he expected that by the end of 2024, 50 million Indonesians would have received basic digital training.
"Our micro, small, and medium enterprises cannot survive in the future if we do not prepare them to have basic digital skills," he added.
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Furthermore, to develop intermediate digital skills, the government has implemented the Digital Talent Scholarship program, in collaboration with 197 partners, including global technology companies, local governments, state-owned enterprises, polytechnics, and universities, he noted.
"A number of studies have found that we need at least 600 thousand digital talents with intermediate skills every year for the next 15 years. Hence, Kominfo has taken the talents development initiative for several years,” Plate said.
In 2021, the program ran quite intensively, reaching 131,204 participants, he informed.
The curricula of the program include the development of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, the internet of things (IoT), virtual reality, augmented reality, and coding, he said.
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Furthermore, it is hoped that the program's participants will increase to 200 thousand, in collaboration with more than 100 universities in Indonesia, he added.
Meanwhile, for developing advanced digital skills, a Digital Leadership Training program is being offered, which was attended by 306 participants in 2021, in collaboration with four globally renowned universities -- the National University of Singapore, Tsinghua University, Harvard University, and Oxford University, he noted.
The program will be improved in 2022 by collaborating with by collaborating with eight world-class universities including Cornell University, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he disclosed. It is going to target 400 participants, he added.
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Translator: Suci Nurhaliza, Uyu Liman
Editor: Suharto
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