Sunday, 12 February 2012
About | Contact Us | Careers | Feed
RESOURCE CENTRE
Tax and Revenue Management: A government’s lifeblood
IT has provided the opportunities for governments to remodel the entire process of tax collection over the last decade. It is, however, a continuously evolving process and governments the world over need to constantly upgrade their tax systems to optimise their revenue workflows.
Unlocking Public Value
A recent SAP study confirmed that those organisations which adopt best practices in the areas of scope and adoption, process standardisation, technology and customer governance, do perform better, and do so as their best practice maturity increases.
Governments and Socialising
The advent of social media has seen governments hopping onto the bandwagon in a bid to further engage citizens.
Advertisement
Follow us on Twitter 
| Join us on 
Digital Inclusion
How ICT is helping to feed Indonesia
Indonesia’s Ministry of Agriculture has the task of feeding a population that is expected to grow from 238 million in 2010 to 288 million within the decade. The Ministry’s IT division head told FutureGov how an annual budget of four billion rupiah (US$444,000) is being spent on ICTs to better equip farmers with information they can use to boost productivity.
“Our biggest challenge is how to provide enough food for everyone,” said Bayu Mulyana, Head of Information System Development Division, Centre for Agricultural Data and Information, Ministry of Agriculture. “To do this, farmers do not only need subsidies from the government. For them to farm more productively, they need to be given information on new technology, processing, marketing, the weather, and crop prices.”
The MOA’s IT division is focusing its budget on providing the archipelago’s 44 million farmers with information they can use to better manage their resources.
It is also using GPS to map areas of wetland that could potentially be used for agricultural purposes, and smartcards are being trialled to monitor the use of seed aid and the distribution of subsidies. The Farmer Empowerment through Agricultural Technology and Information initiative is one the Ministry’s key projects.
Data collected by field officers in the sub districts [networks of administrative villages] is sent to an information control centre at the MOA by using web-based applications or SMS. The same technology is then use to disperse this information to farmers.
Internet access in rural Indonesia is still very low, but mobile phone use among the farming community is growing quickly. Of the 11 million new mobile subscribers added to the country’s Indonesia’s 180 million subscriber base between April and June 2010, seven million live in the countryside.
“Distributed computers with internet access have been deployed in the sub districts to get information from field workers to farmers,” Mulyana explained. “SMS is used to reach those in more remote areas.”
It is difficult to determine the extent to which productivity gains are a result of better access to information for farmers, just as it is for subsidies on fertiliser and new farming technology.
Rice production in Indonesia is growing at three per cent compared to last year — already well above demand — while the population increased by 1.34 per cent.
But despite good harvests over the past two years, the government is aware that a tightening regional environment, with some countries stopping rice exports, further bad weather and attacks by pests could put quickly put agricultural productivity in peril.
This is why getting information to farmers in a timely manner is critical, Mulyana concludes.
Rate this article
Add your comment
Most highly rated
Better learning with web 2.0 and virtual worlds
In a visit to Ngee Ann Secondary School yesterday (22 July), FutureGov found students deeply ...
Students take a green stance with social media
Ngee Ann Secondary School’s students are on a bid to “change the world” with ...
Will Facebook profiles replace govt web sites?
It’s all the rage for ministries and agencies to have a Facebook pages these ...