Giving the Role of "Big Data" to Social and Economic Life

Implementation big data or large data sets are generally more often intended for business needs. Nowadays, big data widely used as one of the determinants in making business decisions.

Talking in scope wider, big data not only relied solely on it. Big data can be applied to types of businesses that can provide better changes to society.

Moreover, Indonesia currently has a population of 268 million, of which there are 355 million mobile subscribers and 150 million internet users. This will lead to getting bigger spending data from various sectors in the future.

Co-founder and CEO Volantis Bachtiar Rifai in this #TuesdayStartup session will discuss more deeply about how big data can have a wider social impact.

Volantis alone is a startup from the expansion of Kofera Technology, a marketing automation platform provider startup in Indonesia. 

Starting from planning and synchronizing data

Bachtiar opened his story by describing the current situation, where the presence of the internet and its derivative products has increased the status of a number of people (society) in Indonesia.

For example, from earlier unbankable, now have access to a variety of digital services. Even this group can also buy goods with credit card installments.

In relation to the big data, Bachtiar assessed that the technology could provide added value in the lives of small communities, such as farmers.

He gave an example of how farmers in Indonesia have never been reported positively. What happens is that farmers often experience difficulties because their products do not sell well.

Not to mention the frequent miscoordination between supply and demand. The government actually makes import policies, even though many farmers harvest in a number of regions in Indonesia.

According to him, the above happened because the government did not fully data-driven so there is a lot of information in the field that is not well recorded. For example, there is no information about when farmers harvest until the time is right for farmers to distribute their harvests.

"This can happen because there is no big data [and its derivatives], namely artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning There is no data synchronization. This problem is not difficult, but requires intention and coordination from all stakeholder SOEs," he said.

Have cash flow and/or UR or and/or complete balance sheet data-driven policy

Bachtiar assessed that data planning and synchronization could be implemented with a policy on data integration (data-driven policy). Even, big data also used to create new policies in the future.

Of course, in the long run, policies resulting from big data is expected to have an impact on economic progress in Indonesia.

"Without data, [we] cannot experiment. Instead, data will help us to experiment, and with machine learning we can make policies," he added.

Cultivate mindset data

Of course, the most basic element that needs to be done to achieve the things above is to cultivate mindset data and data disclosure (data sharing).

According to Bachtiar, these two elements will facilitate the integration of data between institutions and industries, which so far are considered to be still scattered. 

"This is the most difficult homework for us. And it is impossible for one generation to finish it. This has to start now," said Bachtiar.

The government becomes enablers

The government is also required to act as a enablers by cultivating data openness in the government system so that an ecosystem can be created.

Currently, the government has indeed taken up its role by building the data.go.id site. This site is the center of various data, such as infrastructure and poverty index. However, he assesses that the management is not optimal because the data displayed is not optimal .

"The project should be able to continue because the presence of the above data can encourage data-driven society. Data can be utilized in policy makers, where this will also affect the community," he explained.