Digital Technology Helps Create Equal Opportunity

KOMPAS/MEGANDIKA WICAKSONO

Dozens of young women work as online customer service personnel or shopkeepers on March 7, 2018 in Tunjungmuli village of Karangmoncol district, Purbalingga regency, Central Java. As many as 200 youths have been trained to use technology in running rural businesses for monthly wages of Rp 1 million to Rp 4.5 million. Nofi Bayu Darmawan, 26, founded the community with a mission to reduce rural unemployment.

NUSA DUA, KOMPAS —  Transparency and accountability can be promoted with the help of digital technology. The government can play its role through critical policies related to the utilization of digital technology and innovation.

Digital technology is seen as an enabler of inclusive development, but only if used in a smart and critical way.

Therefore, the government needs to play its role by devising supportive policies and collaborating with innovators.

Citing nonprofit organization Oxfam, inclusive development is a development approach that sides with the poor. This approach promotes transparency and accountability and enhances the results of development cooperation through collaboration between civil society, the government and the private sector.

Bukalapak\'s founder and CEO Achmad Zaky said his company always communicated to its employees the important role of digital technology in creating equal opportunities for people of different social classes. This had been demonstrated through Bukalapak’s innovation.

Zaky attended a discussion with the theme "Disruptive Technology and Inclusive Development, What Works?" at the 2018 IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Nusa Dua, Bali, on Wednesday (10/10/2018).

Bukalapak, for example, utilized big data analytics to detect consumer behavior. The results could be used by micro, small and medium-sized business partners to promote their goods in line with the targeted consumer segment. The online marketing website also creates Bukalapak partner applications that provide financial technology services.

According to the World Bank, digital technology supports financial and social inclusion. Based on the 2017 Global Financial Index, 69 percent or 3.8 billion of the world\'s population have accounts at financial institutions or through mobile phones. Mobile phone ownership and internet access increase financial inclusion.

Support

Giant technology companies have their own way to support inclusive development.

The general manager of the Rural Finance Business Department of Ant Financial, Peng Bo, said the development of innovation and financial technology for rural communities in China had begun with information technology-based lending and borrowing services in the period of 2015-2016.

Google Asia Pacific public policy counsel Brett Gerson cited as an example Google\'s Next Billion User Program, which contains a series of innovative applications for developing countries that lack fast internet access.

Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) managing director Lindsay Coates said more empathy for the lower-middle class segment of society was needed in digital technology innovation and implementation. Such empathy made digital innovation for the lower middle class segments of society different from digital innovation for commercial purposes.

"Institutions need to understand the needs of the community. After the product is finished, they have to try, the institutions accompany them until they are skillful. The institutions cannot simply apply digital innovation," he said.

The BRAC is an organization that has a commercial banking license from Bank Bangladesh.

Tulane University professor Nora Lustig, who also serves as the Director of the university’s Commitment to Equity Institute, said that, amid the rapid development of digital technology, there were always parties that would win and other that would lose. In other words, there were parties that enjoyed many advantages, such as the middle-upper class, which is increasingly mastering digital technology. Meanwhile, the lower class – which does not have access to technology, and where competence hence is low – is at risk of being left behind.

"The government needs to take part, namely by being critical of every technological innovation born from a technology company. Is the new economic form produced by technological disruption really successful in improving the welfare of all people?" said Nora. (MED)