In strengthening Indonesia’s role in the G20 Presidency, the Universitas Indonesia (UI) held an international conference aimed as a forum for exchanging ideas, on 15-16 June 2022. This international conference which was held offline and online, brought together the scientists and policy makers to formulate policy brief in supporting G20 Presidency 2022. One issue that became the topic of the panel discussion among the researchers was digital transformation and Economy.
The development of digital technology today has brought major changes to the economic structure and various aspects of people’s lives. Therefore, digitalization generates potential as well as disruption for governments and the global community. The need to maximize the potential of the digital economy motivate for further and in-depth understanding of this digitalization issue in the G20.
“Interestingly, when we experienced the Covid-19 pandemic for the past two years, in our research this pandemic reveal the facts about social inequality, including what we call digital inequality,” said Dr. Herdito Sandi Pratama, M.Hum., in describing his research entitled Increasing Security and Digital Literacy to Realize Global Prosperity.
Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic has also created complexity and uncertainty in the agricultural food supply chain. Especially in staple foods, which became higher due to various social restrictions that disrupted production and distribution activities, and resulted in a food crisis. This was delivered by Ratih Dyah Kusumastuti, S.T., M.T., Ph.D., in her presentation related to digitizing the supply chain of staple foods to minimize the impact of disruption.
“In 2021, Indonesia ranks 69th out of 113 countries in the Global Food Security Index (The Economist Group, 2022), with an overall score of 59.2, down by 2.2 points from 2020. Disruption in the agricultural food supply chain , especially in staple foods, it has a significant impact on food security and people’s livelihoods,” said Ratih.
Furthermore, Ratih said, the resulting policy briefwill contain the policy of digitizing the supply chain of agricultural staple foods by implementingblockchain technology to increase resiliency of the supply chain so as to ensure the availability of staple foods for the community.
In addition, talking about digitalization and the economy, Anna Amalyah Agus, S.E., M.B.A., said that 64.2 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) contributed to 60.51% of Indonesia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 24% of MSMEs had utilized e-commerce. because of that, he and his team conducted research on alternative business models for digitizing MSMEs and creating a healthy business competition climate for e-commerce businesses in Indonesia.
From the results of the research, Anna said that one of the important notes was that there was no update regarding the digital or e-commerce business roadmap which was still left to the market mechanism.
On the first day of this panel discussion, several researchers presented their research, are Dr. Edmon Makarim, S.Kom., S.H., LL.M., (Digital Resilience Aspects of Global Data Flow Governance); Saladin Haikal, S.E., M.M., LL.M. (Policy and Regulatory Framework for the Development of Sustainable Crowdfunding Services(Securities Crowdfunding)in order to support the national economy and protect the interests of investors); Dr. LG. Saraswati Putri, S. Hum., M. Hum., (Women Empowerment of MSME Actors after the Covid-19 Pandemic); Dra. Reni Chandriachsja, MPP., Ph.D. (Collaboration among G20 Countries for Mainstreaming Youth Participation in Digital Transformation and Promoting Sustainable and Inclusive Economic Development in Indonesia); Dr. Tjut Rifameutia Umar Ali, M.A., (Mindfulness for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing in the Age of Digital Transformation); Prof. Sutanto, Ph.D. (Placing Supply-Chain Digitization in G20 Policies); and Vishnu Juwono, S.E., M.I.A., Ph.D. (Policy Recommendations in the Renewable Energy Sector: Regulation, Transparency and Public Participation).
Formulating policy recommendations based on data and science is a form of contribution of scientists in translating research results so that they have practical implications for policy makers and the community.
