Muhammad Nuh was appointed minister of communication and information on the back of his performance in the state education system. His mandate now is to make ICT ubiquitous

‘Knowledge is an integral aspect of community development’
Muhammad Nuh, Minister of Communication and Information

You were recently appointed Minister of Communication and Information.
I was elected as rector of the Institute Teknologi Sepuluh from 2003 to 2007. My duties there ended in May this year and less than a month later, President Susilo Bambang called me and asked if I would join him in the cabinet. He asked me to prepare a proposal of ideas on how to develop ICT in Indonesia.

Within two months we had developed a strategy. The National Information and Communications Technology Council will be chaired by the president and tasked with formulating IT policy. As ICT minister, I hold the position of executor and will manage the day-to-day issues. The committee has been tasked with implementing a large and ambitious programme of ICT initiatives including the completion of the Palapa Ring Project that is to cover 50 per cent of cities. There are also plans to establish broadband wireless networks in larger cities, alongside initiatives related to e-procurement, e-government and IT education between each department at a national level.

What are the key areas of your proposal for ICT development?
Each government department is aware of the necessity of ICT, but we must integrate the systems between each department at a national level. The key point of this proposal is the Information Bridge, a platform for ICT that integrates all the ICT resources in Indonesia. Without networking, there can be no development, and the information bridge will extract the maximum benefit from ICT in the country. My main concern is to find the optimum benefit from infrastructure and telecommunication systems to reduce the new infrastructure investment needed. The philosophy of resource sharing is one of the key issues for future development. Healthy competition is not only from A to Z, but also from A to B in terms of resource sharing, and in this way we can increase our competitiveness and at the same time reduce our total investment needs.

What goals have you set out for the development of this infrastructure?
A knowledge-based society is a society in which information is an integral aspect of community development, and the key issue in the development of this type of society is how to broadcast the information itself. Infrastructure availability is one of the largest challenges in Indonesia. As of 2006 we still have 38,000 out of 70,000 villages without any communication infrastructure, so our programme in 2007-2008 is to supply every village with this infrastructure. Our department sent a request to other departments to join our programme and to invest in each village, so that we can develop other necessities such as sanitation and transport. Infrastructure availability, affordability and social transformation, e-education, e-health and an increase in e-literacy are the key factors for development.