Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), in collaboration with the Nusantara Capital Authority (Otorita Ibu Kota Nusantara/OIKN) and the UGM Alumni Family (Kagama), graduated 39 smart forest city experts who completed the Otorita IKN x UGM Online Special Training Program. The program was designed to develop high-quality human resources capable of supporting IKN’s development as the future capital of the Republic of Indonesia.
Delivered through the UGM Online platform, the intensive program was conducted from November to December 2025 and recorded an outstanding completion rate.
A total of 39 employees from nine strategic work units within OIKN participated in the program, including the Deputy for Green and Digital Transformation and the Legal and Compliance Unit.
The participants completed a multidisciplinary, tailor-made curriculum designed to address the unique challenges of IKN.
“Implementation data show that the average completion rate exceeded 80 percent, a figure that reflects the strong dedication of IKN’s civil servants to absorbing new knowledge,” said Daniel Oscar Baskoro, senior advisor and expert in Enterprise Architecture, Innovation Design, and Technology at OIKN, on Wednesday (Jan. 21).
Baskoro explained that the training specifically focused on future-oriented curricula for a city of the future.
Rather than offering standard bureaucratic materials, the program immersed participants in seven critical modules that form the DNA of Nusantara, namely Green Architecture, Climate Change, Ecological Anthropology, Population Dynamics, Big Data, Digital Government, and Technopreneurship.
According to him, the Green Architecture course emerged as the most popular module, achieving the highest completion rate at 89.74 percent.
This indicates that OIKN officials place sustainable building standards as a top operational priority, in line with the city’s Net Zero Emission vision.
Strong interest was also shown in the Ecological Anthropology module.
“This module equips policymakers with a humanistic perspective to ensure that the physical development of IKN continues to respect social harmony and the surrounding environment,” he explained.
UGM Rector, Professor Ova Emilia, welcomed and expressed her appreciation for the implementation of the Otorita IKN x UGM Online Special Training Program.
She described the program as a tangible manifestation of the Triple Helix collaboration ecosystem between government, academia, and society, in which UGM is present not only as an educational institution but also as a strategic development partner.
“This is further strengthened by the presence of the 621-hectare Wanagama Nusantara Education Forest in the IKN area, which functions as a living laboratory for sustainability research,” she said.
On the same occasion, the rector emphasized the vital role of universities in safeguarding IKN’s development. According to her, UGM remains fully committed to contributing to the realization of IKN as a Smart Forest City through the development of research- and science-based human resource capacity.
The success of this training program, alongside the development of Wanagama Nusantara, demonstrates that UGM is building IKN not only with concrete and steel, but also with ideas and values of sustainability.
“We are all proud to see OIKN staff so diligently studying new disciplines, from big data to ecological anthropology. This is a key asset in making Nusantara Indonesia’s window to the tropical world,” she said.
Director of the Directorate of Academic Innovation Studies (DKIA) UGM, Dr. Hatma Suryoatmojo, stated that the special training provided materials on digital transformation and bureaucratic development, as well as the application of Big Data and Digital Government technologies to reinforce IKN’s direction toward smart and transparent governance.
“Participants in this program were trained to use prescriptive data analysis in decision-making, moving away from traditional intuition-based approaches,” he explained.
Looking ahead, Dr. Suryoatmojo added, the collaboration between OIKN and UGM will continue to expand, not only through online formats but also through integrated field research at Wanagama Nusantara, ensuring that every policy developed in IKN is grounded in a strong, well-tested academic foundation.
Author: Agung Nugroho
Post-editor: Rajendra Arya
Photograph: Liputan6.com