Indonesian-German Digital Dialogue on the way

BMDV is committed to create a common international framework for the digital transformation of the economy. To achieve this goal, international dialogues are key – especially between technologically leading nations – as they can provide important building blocks for international alignment.

Germany’s and Indonesia’s economies are closely interconnected, and Indonesia is an important partner for Germany in digitalisation. Indonesia has a growing and innovative digital economy. This includes established corporations as well as a highly dynamic start-up scene. The country is home to more than 10 unicorns (start-ups valued at over $1 billion) and two decacorns (start-ups valued at over $10 billion).

Exchange on potential cooperation topics

Therefore, BMDV proposed to have a continuous exchange between Indonesia and Germany on matters of digital transformation and digital policy – a Digital Dialogue that connects the nations and provides a platform for cooperation.

During the Asia Tech x Singapore summit in May 2022, Minister Johnny G. Plate (KOMINFO) and State Secretary Stefan Schnorr (BMDV) spoke about a bilateral cooperation on digitalisation issues. They welcomed the idea to establish an Indonesian-German Digital Dialogue to deepen the cooperation.

Next steps

As a follow-up, a meeting between BMDV and KOMINFO took place in Indonesia during the G20 Digital Minister’s Meeting. Both sides supported the envisaged dialogue format and discussed next steps. They agreed that there is a variety of potential cooperation topics for the Digital Dialogue, e.g., general regulatory issues, data protection, dataflow, regulation of AI, internet governance and the digital economy.

The next step is the development of a Joint Declaration of Intent to be signed by both ministries at the Hannover Messe 2023 with Indonesia as official partner country.