Regional Governments Urged to Strengthen Innovation for Sustainable Smart Governance
Jakarta (ANTARA) - Yusharto Huntoyungo, head of the Domestic Policy Strategy Agency (BSKDN) at the Ministry of Home Affairs, has urged regional governments to strengthen innovation as the foundation for achieving sustainable smart governance.
“Smart governance is the ability of government to make data-driven decisions, integrate across sectors, strengthen public participation, harness artificial intelligence and data analytics, and build collaboration between governments and multiple stakeholders,” Yusharto said in a statement in Jakarta on Friday.
He made the remarks after receiving the “Excellence Leadership Innovation in Smart Governance for Urban Sustainability” award at the Smart City, Innovation Construction & Sustainable Living Awards 2026 event at the Indonesia Convention Exhibition (ICE) BSD City in Tangerang.
Yusharto emphasised that the concept should not be understood as merely the digitalisation of public services or the use of government applications.
According to him, smart governance rests not only on the use of digital technology, but also on the ability to deliver policies that are adaptive, collaborative, and evidence-based.
“This award is not the finish line of a journey, but a mandate to continue strengthening the transformation of governance that is innovative, adaptive, collaborative, and evidence-based. This award truly belongs to all regional governments that deliver solutions for their communities every day through innovation,” he said.
According to Yusharto, increasingly complex urban development challenges driven by urbanisation require governments to produce more innovative policies to address traffic congestion, housing, waste management, environmental pollution, climate change, and growing demands for fast and transparent public services.
He judged that these challenges cannot be answered through a conventional bureaucratic approach, but require data-driven policies, supported by digital technology, and built through collaboration between government, academia, the business community, civil society organisations, and the public.
In that context, Yusharto affirmed that regional innovation is a vital foundation for national development. For this reason, the Ministry of Home Affairs continues to build an innovation ecosystem through guidance, measurement, mentoring, and the dissemination of best practices developed by regional governments.
“Behind the tens of thousands of those innovations lie experiences, lessons, and solutions that have proven capable of addressing people’s problems. Our task is to ensure all these good practices are processed into policy knowledge, analysed scientifically, and then translated into policy recommendations that can be replicated nationally,” he said.
Yusharto added that the BSKDN will continue to strengthen its role as a government think tank within the Ministry of Home Affairs by utilising policy foresight, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and evidence-based policy evaluation to produce policy recommendations capable of addressing current and future development challenges.
According to him, Indonesia’s development success is determined not only by the size of the budget or physical infrastructure, but also by the government’s ability to turn knowledge into policy, innovation into a working culture, and collaboration into real benefits for society.