artikel opini di jakarta post di bawah ini
menarik, meskipun moment nya mungkin agak
kadaluwarsa. Ini ditulis mas sulfikar Amir,
( he is now Ph.D ), staf pengajar jurusan
desain ITB pada bulan Mei 2004, sesaat
setelah selesainya Pemilu Legislatif Indonesia.
Fokus tulisan adalah mengemukakan pendapat
mengenai rancangan kabinet, terutama untuk
bidang yang berkaitan erat dengan Riset &
Teknologi. Bukan pada aspek politisnya,
tetapi pada aspek organisasi & manajemennya.
Sulfikar berpendapat, bahwa selama ini
kegiatan Ristek terasa kurang relevansinya
dengan kepentingan pembangunan, a.l.
mungkin disebabkan karena Kementerian
Ristek yang "berjalan sendiri" ...
Oleh karena itu, Sulfikar berpendapat,
Kementerian Ristek sebaiknya dihapus,
fungsinya dipecah menjadi 2 :
(A) fungsi riset => sains (dalam arti riset dasar)
(B) fungsi pengembangan teknologi =>
industri & perdagangan
kedua fungsi hasil pecahan dari fungsi Menristek di
atas kemudian di "cangkok" kan ke 2 Departemen yang
terkait: (1) Dept. Pendidikan Nasional dan (2)
Departemen Industri & Perdagangan, sebagai "fungsi
tambahan", sehingga kedua departemen tersebut
perlu diubah namanya, masing-2 menjadi :
(A) Departemen Riset dan Pendidikan
(B) Departemen Teknologi, Industri, dan Perdagangan
cukup menarik, bahwa nama dan cakupan tugas departemen
(A) Departemen Riset dan Pendidikan kebetulan sama
dengan departemen terkait di jerman : BMBF
( Bundes Ministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung :
Kementerian Federal untuk Pendidikan dan Riset )
mengingat bahwa Sulfikar pada saat itu menempuh Ph.D
di New York. Meskipun usulan di atas sudah terlambat
untuk di wujudkan pada Kabinet Pesatuannya SBY,
mungkin bisa dipertimbangkan lagi untuk perbaikan
struktur organisai Kabinet di masa depan.
====================================( i.h.m. )===
<http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?
fileid=20040506.E02>
=================================================
Science and technology should be realigned in RI
=================================================
Opinion and Editorial - May 06, 2004
Sulfikar Amir, New York
The 2004 legislative election ended successfully and peacefully.
Soon, for the very first time, we are going to vote for the country's
president. This is a no less daunting process since it undoubtedly
involves power-sharing, which can be messy and unpredictable.
One thing is clear, though. Economics-related minister's portfolios
will be vigorously contested by the big players. For these seats
provide accesses to the state's financial resources.
I am not interested in discussing these lucrative seats. There is one
seat that is certainly crucial, yet ignored by politicians for its
lack of access to financial resources. I am talking about the state
minister of research and technology, a seat deemed not lucrative and
thus, usually left to the little players.
During the New Order, the position of state minister of research and
technology, as widely known, was glamorized by BJ Habibie's central
role in technology policy. For over two decades, Habibie dominated
the discourse of technology development and relentlessly advocated
high technology for national development, making the state a major
player in technology development.
Habibie proposed a technological leapfrog by arguing that developing
high technology would allow Indonesia to catch up with developed
countries. This idea relies on the assumption that technology is an
agent of social change. His close relationship with Soeharto enabled
Habibie to nurture his pet project using the state's economic and
political resources.
>From one point of view, Habibie proved that Indonesian scientists
and engineers had capabilities equal to those of industrialized
countries. Through Habibie's programs, many talented students enjoyed
the opportunity to study science and technology at prestigious
universities abroad.
With the success of the N250 flight test in 1995, Habibie asserted
that Indonesians could stand as tall as people of developed nations.
All of this is substantial progress for the country that we are
supposed to be proud of.
But pride is not enough. Despite aforementioned achievements, it is
quite clear that Habibie's hi-tech vision worked technically but
failed economically. Long before the crisis surged over the country,
economists questioned Habibie's technology policies for their high
cost and low contribution to the economy.
Yet, the pragmatism of economists was in vain as Habibie's hi-tech
programs were not derived from economic rationality. They were
motivated more by an ideological stance than by financial
calculations.
Everybody would agree that technology is crucial to this country. But
not all of us realize that our economic and social life today depends
on imported technologies. Habibie left us with a technological
infrastructure and a small but significant number of highly educated
scientists and engineers. Hence, the issue the next cabinet will deal
with is how to rearrange this valuable legacy, so as to make
technology developments beneficial for society at large.
The Office of the State Minister of Research and Technology, thus
far, has attempted to make technology developments down-to-earth. A
number of collaborative programs have been launched to achieve this
goal. This should be appreciated. But in my opinion the problem is in
the office itself.
With the current structure of state administration, the office's
technological programs are hardly relevant to the demands and
conditions of other related sectors because its vision is oriented
exclusively toward technology, not society.
Hence, what I propose is to split the office's two roles, research
(science) and technology, and implant them into different
institutions. This would entail a slight but crucial change to the
two existing ministries. First, the Ministry of Industry and Trade
would become "Technology, Industry, and Trade". Second, the Ministry
of National Education would become "Science, Education, and Culture".
For years there was incoherence between economic and technological
programs. The government recently launched an Act of National System
of Science and Technology to solve this problem. However, the Act
ignored that such incoherence resulted from a decades-long paradigm
quarrel between the neoclassical economics of economic ministers and
Schumpeterian approaches upheld by Habibie and his successors.
While the former views technology as the by-product of the market
mechanism, the latter sees technology as the source of economic
growth. The strict application of these paradigms by competing
groups, as such, results in economic policies that ignore
technological innovations on the one hand, and technology policies
that lack market considerations on the other.
The only way to reconcile these paradigms would be to conflate their
institutionalizations. For this, it would be more effective to
combine technology with industry and trade. The goal of this
integration would be two-fold.
First, it would allow technologically minded people to directly
interact with people of trade and industry, and vice versa. These
interactions would shape integrated policies of technology, industry,
and trade. Second, by integrating the technological sector with the
industrial sector, the major player of technological development
would be private, rather than state industries.
By combining these three sectors in one institution, "the ministry of
technology, industry, and trade" would reflect the industrialization
process.
The proposed ministry would require a leader with a good
understanding of technology, industry, and trade. Moreover, the
minister would need to be aware that technological innovation is not
a cost, but a strategic investment in industry and the economy.
One thing should be noted. Technology is never separate from science.
Thus, it is timely to pay more serious attention to the development
of science -- not solely for the satisfaction and prestige of
scientists, but for the interests of society. The most competent
institutions to conduct scientific research are universities.
University is the place where knowledge is obtained through
scientific research and distributed through education. This is the
main reason why science and education should be combined in one
ministry.
If science and technology are separated in different ministries, how
then, do they interact? The interaction of science and technology
does not occur in state institutions. They interact through the
process of the application of knowledge by university graduates in
industry. This is a key point, whereby the major players of
technological innovation are industries -- no longer the state.
The last issue to point out is the urgency to bring culture back into
the ministry of education. Integrating culture with tourism is a
serious mistake. Culture is not about traditional rituals, dances,
craft, etc. that can be sold as commodities. Culture is a process of
interpretation through which humans understand the world. If science
is the creation of the knowledge system and education is the
distribution of that knowledge, then culture provides the frameworks
upon which the knowledge system is based. This understanding would
underpin the establishment of a ministry of science, education and
culture.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer, a PhD candidate of the Dept. of Science and Technology
Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, may
be contacted at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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