Regarding this, we can assume that Indonesia's economic and financial development has been on the right track. Thus, challenges for the digital economic and financial development are still needed to be faced. That being said, there are still many things to consider to strengthen the role of economy and digital development.

A discussion about various policy perspectives in the new normal era through the National Seminar in 2021, with the theme of "Strengthening Synergies to Accelerate National Economic Recovery in the Digital Era", was brought by ISEI or the Indonesian Economic Scholars Association on Tuesday (08/31). Prof. Reini Wirahadikusumah, Ph.D., The Chancellor of ITB, as one of the speakers, explained ITB’s role in the pandemic era, digitalization program, and transformation.

In her explanation, she mentioned that in preventing the spread of COVID-19, ITB has made several efforts, ranging from the development of multi-user ventilators, mobile disinfectant prototypes for ultraviolet irradiation, Vent-I ventilator devices that have been distributed to hundreds of hospitals, to many research and development in products that are beneficial in this pandemic era.

In 2020, an economic recovery task force was established by ITB in cooperation with West Java government. The task force was then divided into three division; economic recovery policies, facilities and infrastructure supporting business, and business and industrial reactivation.

Many business innovation proposals was sent to the team, including the ones related to Big Data and Industry 4.0, environmentally minded local industries, integrated business development collaborations, and manufacturing for the domestic market. "We identify these proposals as something that can be contributed by ITB."

The highlighted matter in this sub-theme of Digitalization Towards Inclusive Transformation is that digitalization is not only digitalization, it also reaches to a level of institutional transformation with many supports that need to be considered.
"We have done a lot of digitalization, now, what we need to realize is that digitization is an evolutionary process, it needs to be supported by computational learning capabilities and decision makers," she explained.

To conclude her explanation, Prof. Reini added that the virtual or digital connectivity development needs to be done concurrently, as it also needs the development of applications that facilitate interaction between various UMKM with universities and research institutions.

Reporter: Athira Syifa P. S. (Teknologi Pascapanen, 2019)
Translator: Tamara Maharani Alamsyah (Seni Rupa 2020)