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Other islands close gap with Java in digital competitiveness
The 2021 Digital Competitiveness Index points to lessening disparity in digital competitiveness among Indonesia’s 34 provinces amid continued infrastructure development.
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A family in Pati, Central Java, uses a video conferencing application on a laptop on 5 May, 2020. (Antara/Harviyan Perdana Putra)
T
he touristy Bali and Riau Islands have become more attractive locations for tech companies, challenging the dominance of Java, as Indonesia’s provinces compete to capture a bigger slice of Southeast Asia’s largest digital economy.
The two provinces moved up three ranks within the list of top ten tech-friendly Indonesian locations in the 2021 Digital Competitiveness Index (DCI), which is an annual study funded by venture capital firm East Ventures and conducted by Katadata Insight Center.
The study attributed the rise of non-Java provinces to infrastructure development, such as wider coverage of mobile communication signals, more houses with landlines and electricity as well as rising spending on internet data and phone credit.
“The pandemic definitely has an impact on the DCI score, because people are pushed to go online, such as by using e-commerce and video conferencing apps,” Willson Cuaca, cofounder and managing partner at East Ventures, said during the report’s presentation on Monday.
Researchers measure each province's digital input, such as the availability of tech-savvy human resources and internet access, its digital output, such as the number of workers in the digital sectors, as well as digital support, like infrastructure and regulations.
The 2021 DCI shows a growing equalization in digital competitiveness among Indonesia’s 34 provinces as the COVID-19 pandemic propelled digital infrastructure development across the archipelago.
The median score for digital competitiveness, which lies on a 0-100 scale, improved from 27.9 last year to 32 this year, indicating shrinking disparity between the highest-scoring and lowest-scoring provinces.
