Pustral UGM

Telecommunication has been the important part of everyday life as well as good program such as Universal Service Obligation (USO) in telecommunication sector. Universal service obligation has been the driving force for narrowing the gap between urban and rural area. Universal Service is to achieve availability, non-discriminatory access and widespread affordability of telephone services. Universal Service is in general a per-household concept measured by the percentage of households with a telephone. Universal Access is taken to mean that each person is within a reasonable distance of public-access telephone. Universal service obligation has been a central focus of the development in telecommunication sector contributing to larger development objectives of reducing poverty through creating access for rural community to information and thus new opportunity to improve their livelihood. It further enables rural community, poor people and least developed regions to exploit their social and economic potentials.

The policy migration on USO program to development performance and inter-sectoral approach lead to development of knowledge-based economy. It refers to the use of knowledge to produce economic benefits. It is part of transition to a “knowledge economy”, as an extension of “information society”. The transition requires that the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy need rewriting in an interconnected, globalised economy where knowledge resources such as know-how, expertise, and intellectual property are more critical than other economic resources such as land, natural resources, or even manpower.

From development perspective there is strong demand for policy migration on USO Program, from organizing a regulatory conformance to development performance. Hence, USO program not only focusing in providing the infrastructure and the matter of the regulation compliance, but also providing service or development performance. In addition it also migrates from Independent (Telecommunication Sector) to Interdependent (Multi Sectors).

To respond those issues, a forward-looking technology choices are became very important since the wide range of various demand exist in USO program with multi-sector approach. In the near future, communications facilities and service competition is expected to increase as the communications sector converges. The demand for converging communication will shift  technology  to  one  based  on  IP  protocol  and  gravitates towards new kinds of networks built with technologies such as wireless, wireline, fibre, cable, powerline, and  satellite. Toward this trend the Next Generation Network (NGN) technology offers capability for converging communication and providing unlimited service options.

This project brief indicates a term of reference for participating member states and its dialog partners to identify rural demand for the implementation of Next Generation Network (NGN) in Universal Service Obligation (USO) practices for ASEAN countries and provide a recommendation for intersectoral approach for knowledge base economy in rural area in the region. The main objectives of the project are:

• To produce at a series of recommendations in NGN implementation in rural area in the context of multi-sectoral approach.
• To asses rural demand on NGN technology implementation in rural area in the ASETo identify NGN implementation option in rural area, with its advantage and disadvantage
• To share lesson learnt from multi-sectoral program in rural area for technical, administrative, and costs requirements for NGN in USO implementation in the ASEAN Member States.
• To provide recommendation for NGN implementation in rural areaAN member countries.
• to reinforce the ASEAN Member Countries commitment to USO,
• to promote a common understanding of its importance in extending the benefits of regional integration through future-ready technology in ICT development.

This project is already finished and produce several interesting findings, guidelines, and recommendations. The report can be downloaded at www.pustral-ugm.org/irud. Please note that the contents of this documentation is the sole responsibility of PUSTRAL UGM and in no way be taken reflect the views of the ASEAN nor Government of Japan.

The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering of University of New South Wales has welcomed a group of senior Indonesian government officials from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Transportation, Jakarta, as well as senior academics from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta.

The group are in Sydney as part of an action-based research program GREAT (Governance Reform in the Indonesian Transport Sector), and will participate in a five day intensive short course at the School on transport infrastructure planning and implementation.

The course will include technical briefings, tours of transport infrastructure and operations, and lectures and seminar exchanges held with leading Australian transport researchers and practitioners from various government and private sector organisations, including UNSW, the University of Sydney, companies including Metro Transport Sydney, Jackson Teece Architects, Transfield Ltd, AtkinsGlobal, Urban Research and Planning, (URaP), and the Sydney Harbour Tunnel Company, as well as NSW Government agencies such as the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet, Sydney Metro, NSW Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation.

The course has been coordinated by Emeritus Professor John Black, who has twenty years involvement as a higher level consultant for governments and the private sector, and researcher in sustainable cities and transport.

Professor Black says, “Indonesia faces enormous challenges in expanding its transport infrastructure and services in an efficient, sustainable and equitable way. Both public sector and private sectors need to take a lead nationally, provincially and locally, with sustainable partnerships being the way forward. This course enables senior government officials to learn the problems and solutions from Australia’s long experience with public-private sector partnerships in transport, and to distill relevant procedures for Indonesia’s economic and social development.”

GREAT research is funded with a competitive grant through the Australia Indonesia Governance Research Partnership – an Australian Government initiative managed by the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. The University of New South Wales and the Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, are collaborating on the continuation of the GREAT research project during 2009.

Original link here

The Government of Indonesia recognizes that poor transport infrastructure and services are constraining the economic and social development of rural areas and impeding its efforts to alleviate rural poverty, stem rural-urban migration, and more generally to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

With current transport infrastructure expenditure accounting for approximately 10-15% of national spending, the sector is obviously an ideal subject for governance reform. If the government subsidy for the transport sector managed by the Ministry of Finance is included (in the form of transport service/fare subsidy, Public Service Obligation in transport sector, pioneering transport/operator subsidy, and fuel subsidy), this sector has the highest percentage of government expenditure and GDP. A significant increase of the public works and transportation sector budget in 2008, and presumably in following years, requires better safeguards in order to achieve sustainable policy for delivery of infrastructure. Government policy to promote public-private partnership (PPP) schemes needs to address governance issues in the area of sustainability, planning, the design of concession agreements, as well as subsidies, contracting and procurement processes, and enforcement of user charges.

The decentralization process in Indonesia requires sub-national or local governments to play an active role in infrastructure project assessment and procurement and local level/smaller scale PPP projects. Fundamental research is therefore required in designing subsidy policy and public service obligation in the transport services; the design of concession agreement for private sector-financed projects in transportation infrastructure and service provision (including the role of risk allocation); and policy and regulatory frameworks for contracting and procurement for transport projects, especially strategic planning and transparent guidelines for private finance initiatives (PFI). In this field strengthening the capabilities of central and local government agencies, and to educate the domestic and international private sectors are both of high priority and should be addressed by the provision of appropriate training and education support.

Want to know more? Please visit Great Project website at http://great.pustral-ugm.org/

The quality of infrastructure in Indonesia is poor. This limits the health and well being of the Indonesian population and severely restricts their potential for economic development. The infrastructure sector has difficulties getting to grips with the challenges the country is facing. To address this situation, promising policies are being developed and implemented such as the policy on decentralization that mandates local government agencies to play a leading role in infrastructure planning, construction and operation at the local level. Additionally, a policy is being implemented to relax the past rigid planning procedures and come to a more community centered planning and development of infrastructure systems.

It is recognised by national level agencies in Indonesia that the successful implementation of these policies is frustrated by the severe capacity limitations that exist with various local level stakeholders. In order to address these, the Centre for Transportation and Logistics Studies (PUSTRAL) of the University of Gadjah Mada (UGM) has been requested by the National Planning Development Agency Bappenas, to prepare a postgraduate programme in Infrastructure and Community Development. In its turn, PUSTRAL has approached ITC to assist in the development of this programme. To be able to respond to this request the current project is proposed.

The long-term objective of the project is to contribute to the establishment of a critical mass of multidisciplinary professionals that are able to apply innovative approaches to the complexities of integrated and community centered planning and management of infrastructure. This will be achieved through supporting the design and implementation of an academic programme in community infrastructure development consisting of a M.Sc., short courses and a PhD research programme developed and executed by the involved partners.

These activities are already under development by the Indonesia partner and are foreseen to continue beyond the duration of the project. The activities to be executed within the project will have a supporting role in the development of this programme, and are meant to improve thematic coverage and scientific quality to international standards and increase societal relevance. Important short term objectives of the project are the development of the curriculum for the MSc and short course activities, a substantial amount of teaching material (including an extensive integrated infrastructure project), the training of local staff, the development of a regional training and marketing plan, the initiation of a joint research programme, the implementation and evaluation of 1 cycle of the MSc programme and the short courses.

Want to know more? Please visit our INDF website at http://indf.pustral-ugm.org/