The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is a powerful reminder of the value and power of science. To have nine COVID-19 vaccines developed, tested, approved and delivered into the arms of billions of people around the world in just under two years is totally unprecedented in the history of medicine, science and vaccine development.

Indonesia has not lagged behind in developing COVID-19 vaccines. In October 2022, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo launched the country’s first domestically produced COVID-19 shot, IndoVac, marking an important milestone on the country’s road to vaccine independence and self-sufficiency, and in reducing inequities in vaccine access around the world, especially in developing countries. The IndoVac vaccine was developed jointly by Indonesia’s state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, the United States.

Despite the encouraging news around COVID-19 vaccines, what about the research scene in Indonesia more broadly? Regretfully, the picture is not so rosy.

Indonesia’s research innovation ecosystem, ranked 85th out of 131 countries across the world in the Global Innovation Index Ranking of 2020, is not an encouraging state of affairs and there is clearly much room for improvement. Indonesia spends a mere 0.2 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on research and development (R&D) compared with 0.7 percent in India and 2 percent in China, the United States and Singapore.

Singapore, for example, spends 45 percent more than Indonesia on R&D and received 21 percent more patent applications in 2018. While it has been estimated that Indonesia's research funding amounts to Rp 27 trillion (US$1.8 billion), which is much higher than those of the Philippines and Vietnam, it has just 89 researchers for every 1 million population.

Referring to the 2019 Global Innovation Index, Vietnam has 673 researchers per million people and among the ASEAN member states, Indonesia ranked second-last in research, with institutional weakness being a major identified flaw.

What is being done about the current situation and what is the future of research in Indonesia?

A major development in the Indonesian research landscape was the establishment of the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) in 2019. Presidential Decree No. 78/2021 made it the sole national research agency, which has focused on fusing and combining many pre-existing scientific agencies into its own body.

Some have characterized BRIN as a "holding research institution" or as a "research superbody" housing all state research activities of Indonesia.

The formation of BRIN has proved controversial and a recent article (The Jakarta Post, Feb. 3, 2023) stated that “the future of science and innovation in Indonesia is at stake under BRIN, researchers say, as it faces mounting public criticism over a series of questionable policies deemed as detrimental to scientific progress”.

What has been the main criticisms of BRIN? First, the decision to take over existing agencies under the single umbrella of BRIN was seen as a backward, retrograde step compromising the independence of researchers and effectively turning them into civil servants.

Second, there have been accusations of financial mismanagement with reckless spending policies involving significant sums allocated to activities not directly linked to research promotion.

Third, BRIN has been accused of neglecting the welfare and job security of researchers across many institutions with a lack of clarity on rules, job descriptions and responsibilities. As a consequence, many of the country’s best researchers, for example from the Eijkman Institute of Molecular Biology, have joined research laboratories in the private sector.

This represents a big loss to Indonesia’s research capacity built over many decades. This neglect will clearly affect the morale and motivation of researchers across all research institutions in Indonesia.

In an independent analysis, the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore has additionally identified three major challenges facing BRIN.

First, the challenge of overcoming a “technocratic” mindset, referring to a bureaucracy run by technologists rather than researchers, which has hampered research in the country in the past.

Second, the politicization of research institutions, as indicated by the involvement of political parties in research supervision, is another issue that it has to grapple with. BRIN comes under the strategic direction of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) matriarch Megawati Soekarnoputri, who was appointed BRIN’s chief adviser in 2021.

Finally, achieving an environment that makes beneficial and healthy research possible built around an effective system of funding, academic rewards, academic freedom and a vibrant academic community, is the third challenge. One example, would be subjecting critical academic collaboration, such as the InoVac example mentioned above, to onerous and unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles.

There is much current pressure from all quarters to revisit and reform the objectives and structure of BRIN in order to make it a more effective driver of research in Indonesia. For research and innovation to thrive, researchers and institutions must be given autonomy and freedom to pursue the latest ideas in science with strong, long-term and sustainable support from the government and the freedom to pursue international links with research institutions around the world.

Scientific advancement will be ill-served when researchers are turned into rule-bound civil servants subject to the whims and political agendas of bureaucrats.

There is no doubt that scientific research is critical to help the country overcome pressing  problems in the health sector, for example, ranging from stunting to the epidemic of smoking and chronic diseases. As succinctly stated by Prof. Julio Frenk "There is a pathway from good science to publication to evidence, and to programs that work. In this way research becomes an inherent part of problem-solving and policy implementation".

Will the government respond to such demands for reform? Arguably, BRIN has been in existence for only two to three years so it perhaps should be given a chance to prove its worth. But if it manages to overcome the challenges mentioned above, it will be in a good position to enhance the capacity and competence of Indonesian researchers as the foundation for Vision Indonesia 2045, to be a sovereign, advanced, fair and prosperous nation by the country’s centennial in 2045.

Let us hope for sense and reason to prevail in order to achieve this laudable aspirational goal.

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The writer is a visiting professor at Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.