Vice President: Unified Database Important in Improving Social Assistance Programmes

10 February 2015

To promote greater efficiency and effectiveness in programme implementation, all technical ministries that carry out social assistance programmes must use the same integrated data. In order to boost efficiency, the Unified Database (BDT), which is currently managed by the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K), can act as a single source of data that can be tailored to meet the needs of individual ministry programmes.

This was emphasised by Vice President Jusuf Kalla during his visit to TNP2K’s office on 10 February 2015. The Vice President added that the government should use a single data source for programme assistance, which should be updated regularly. “We do not need a lot of data sources, it is enough to have one that is regularly updated," said the Vice President.

During the visit, TNP2K’s Executive Secretary Bambang Widianto gave the Vice President an explanation of the benefits of BDT use for social assistance programmes. Widianto added that BDT contains the names and addresses of the 40 percent of Indonesia's population with the lowest socioeconomic conditions. This is equivalent to 96.7 million individuals or 24.7 million households. “In the BDT, households are categorised according to welfare level, which takes into account more than 20 variables, such as household characteristics, socioeconomic conditions, the condition of houses, and ownership of assets," said Widianto.

In addition, BDT also contains distribution aggregate data by region, from the national, provincial, district/city level to the village level. The aggregate data can be used for various analytical needs or thematic program planning as it contains a variety of diverse variables and indicators. BDT aggregate data can be accessed online through bdt.tnp2k.go.id, while data by name and address can be requested.

At present, the BDT is used in implementing various social assistance programmes, such as the Social Protection Card (KPS), which was launched in 2013; the Family Welfare Card (KKS); Smart Indonesia Card (KIP); and Healthy Indonesia Card (KIS) in 2014. In addition, the BDT contributed to improved mechanisms in the Cash for Poor Students (BSM) programme, by making it household based rather than school based. It is also used in the targeting of 86.4 million Premium Assistance Beneficiaries (PBI) for the National Health Insurance (JKN) programme.

During his visit, the Vice President also visited the BDT data centre, which is located in the Office of TNP2K’s Secretariat: on the 16^th floor of Grand Kebon Sirih building. There he took a close look at the BDT data storage servers and listened to explanations of TNP2K’s data request procedures.

Accompanying the Vice President was the Coordinating Minister for Human Development and Culture Puan Maharani, Minister for the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) Andrinof Chaniago, Minister of Social Affairs Khofifah Indar Parawansa, and the Vice President’s Special Staff Sofyan Wandandi and Wijayanto Samirin.