FACE TO FACE: Environment minister Rachmat Witoelar (center) talks to Arief Widhiyasa of the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) as PT Microsoft Indonesia President Director Tony Chen (second right) looks on. (JP/P.J. Leo)

"The Seweru River in Madiun, East Java, is always dirty recently. It is likely the nearby new factory has polluted the river with its waste products."

This is an example of a short text message that one could send to Butterfly, a software system intended to collect, manage and forward reports of environmental destruction to the responsible authorities.

When one sees a forest fire, illegal logging, a polluted river, floods, draught or any other kinds of environmental damage, he or she can send a report to Butterfly either through SMS, phone call or the Internet.

The system then classifies the problems based on category, priority and location, forwarding each report to the nearest responsible authority, who is expected to immediately solve the problem.

All community reports and responses, either settling the problems or pending them, will be accessible to the public on Butterfly's website.

The award-winning software Butterfly is currently being developed by a group of university students in Bandung.

Arief Widhiyasa is a member of the student team developing the software. The team demonstrated Butterfly in front of the State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar and his staff in Jakarta on Monday.

Arief and friends -- Dimas Yusuf Danurwenda, Ella Madanella Dwi Mustika and Erga Ghaniya -- are all students of Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). They recently won the Microsoft-sponsored international software competition, the 2008 Imagine Cup, in Paris for Butterfly.

Successfully beating 60 teams from 60 countries, the four-student Antarmuka (Interface) team has brought home the prestigious Rural Innovation Achievement Award from Microsoft.

According to Microsoft Indonesia president director Tony Chen, Microsoft labeled Butterfly "innovative" and "highly relevant to the current condition of Indonesia's environment".

With the country's increasing number of mobile phone and Internet users, the Antarmuka team is optimistic their self-designed software will be applicable in the archipelago, whose dealing with environmental destruction issues is much hampered by a poor reporting system.

Rachmat said his ministry was ready to use the students' Butterfly software, but added that the ministry first needed to coordinate with the related ministries and government institutions to make the environment reporting system work effectively.

Rachmat said the government might buy the property rights of the software from the students.

Secretary to the minister, Arief Yuwono, acknowledged there was a "wide gap" and "distortion" between environmental problems and their handling, and that Butterfly could very likely help settle the problems quickly by "bringing the problems closer to those in charge to settle them".

He said the ministry would soon discuss possible cooperation with Internet service providers and cellular telephone operators to help run the Butterfly system.

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