Research Investment Republic of Indonesia (RIRI); what Indonesia can learn from Australia
I have been asking myself for quite some time, “what will happen to my research after I finish my PhD.” I may publish articles out off it but then what? Can it inform policy discussion in the sector that I’m working on? Can it bring change to the community whom I worked with? Can I meet the expectation of government official in one of my interviews? Or my own expectation of what the outcome should be? Or will it be just like another ‘research for the sake of research’? And end up in a small corner of the library?
With those questions in mind, I attended the Research Investment Republic of Indonesia (RIRI) workshop. The workshop was organised by the On-Award Enrichment Program, Australia Awards Indonesia. It was held in Canberra from 24 to 25 October 2018. Twenty five research students from universities in Australia were chosen to participate in the workshop on merit basis. All are Australia Awards awardees who come from different background; public and private universities and government’s research institutes.
The main topic of the workshop was ‘knowledge to policy’, or how can research inform better government policy. The workshop was opened with an introduction to RIRI by Dr. Stephen Sherlock. It was then followed by brainstorming and discussion on the objectives and problems facing researchers and research institution in Indonesia.
Two representatives from the Research Funding and Policy Branch of Department of Education discussed about the role of Australian government in research in the first session. From this presentation, we learnt about Australia’s approach to research and development. The next presentation provided us with the insight from the government-funded research agencies, i.e. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). ACIAR has funded many research project in developing countries. GFAR’s IndoDairy project is one of the projects in Indonesia funded by ACIAR. Questions and answer in the middle of presentation allowed more discussions and made the session became livelier.
The first day of the workshop was concluded with a presentation by Universities Australia, and a short tour to Canberra’s public landmarks.
The second day of the workshop begun with a presentation by Mr. Justin Withers from Australia Research Council (ARC). This presentation provide us with an understanding of how the Australian Government’s research investment funded and managed. An experience from private sector in the next presentation brought about new perspectives on how to bring knowledge to policy. And to do so one of the skills required for a researcher is by being more creative in communicating research. This was explained in the last presentation by Dr. Arianto Patunru from Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University (ANU).
The last part of the workshop was another round of brainstorming. Here, we reflect on what we had learnt from Australia’s approach on research and development, and compared it with Indonesian’s approach from different research institutions’ perspectives and experiences. Perhaps institutional reform is needed to create enabling environment for more evidence based policy in Indonesia. Networking, collaboration, multidisciplinary research, and engagement with community and industry are among other things that need to be improved. A researcher is required to be more creative in communicating research and deliver the message across various audiences, including the policy makers.
One inspiring statement that I noted down from the workshop was from the presentation of Ms. Hawari Badri, Partner of Deloitte Risk Forensic. “Research can provide clients (government or industry) two things: what they want to know, and what they need to know but they don’t know that they need to know.”
My participation in RIRI, as well as the experience as research student at GFAR, has inspired me by large. Few ideas emerge on what to bring and share with my colleagues in my home institution. And the ideas of networking and collaboration will start here, with RIRI’s alumni and my peers at GFAR.
