Technology advancement has influenced all walks of life whilst demanding workers to improve their competence in terms of technology use. Along with the changing work patterns, education institutions need to also make change by equipping students with competence relevant to the changing times.
“Because of the technology advancement, some types of work have indeed been abandoned, but new jobs also arise. Education curriculum has to introduce technology since the very start to be able to generate graduates that are needed by the current society,” said Executive Director of Indonesia Services Dialogue Council, Devi Ariyani, in a public discussion themed National Services Sector and ASEAN Economic Community on Thursday (12/4).
Use of technology, said Devi, often made people worried that human would be replaced by robot. While in fact if used correctly, technology can instead increase someone’s work performance.
“Technology should make our life better, not harder,” she said.
The discussion was organised by ASEAN Studies Center (ASC) UGM collaborating with Office of Co-ordinating Ministry of Economy and Indonesia Services Dialogue Council, entitled Toward Resilience and Innovative Indonesia’s Services Sector in the ASEAN Economic Community. It aimed to give understanding and socialisation of services sector and ASEAN Economic Community.
Devi further described the rapid growth of services sector in Indonesia due to technology. Indonesia is a potential market for digital technology based service providers with 88.1 million active internet users and increase of internet use by 58% annually. She considered that with this potential there should be more Indonesians getting occupied as businessmen or workers, not just being customers.
Another speaker in the discussion who is an economist, Prof. Catur Sugiyanto, saw the significance of education in generating excellent human resource. As one of founders of ASEAN, Indonesia is expected to play the role in realising the vision of ASEAN Economic Community 2025. At the same time Indonesia has to make good use of the Community maximally.
“Our strength lies in the number of human resource, especially now that we have the bonus of demography. We should work on it to encourage our human resource to be more competitive,” he said.
Also attending the event was Deputy Head of International Cooperation from the Ministry, Dr. Rizal Affandi Lukman,who discussed a topic entitled Towards the Vision of ASEAN Economic Community MEA 2025: Development, Opportunity, and Challenge.