Social Enterpreneur - Onno W Purbo

Clusters: Civic Engangement
Field: Information/Technologi

By pioneering the development of appropriate low-cost technologies, recruiting and mobilizing a growing network of “techies” committed to broadening access to and use of the Internet, and advocating related changes in public policy, Onno is playing a central role in transforming Indonesia into a knowledge-based society.


The New Idea

Convinced that access to information and broad participation in knowledge formation are essential building blocks for survival and poverty alleviation in an increasingly globalized economy, Onno is pursuing a concerted range of strategies to stimulate and broaden access to the Internet and thereby engage rapidly increasing portions of Indonesia’s population in knowledge-using and knowledge-generating endeavors.

A key element of those strategies has been the creation and nurturing of a network, or virtual organization, of like-minded individuals who are committed to “democratizing” Internet access. Over the past dozen years, Onno has worked initially with scores and now with hundreds of such individuals who are spearheading the development and use of affordable technologies for bringing affordable and cost-efficient Internet access to schools, grass-roots communities and citizen groups. In addition, in support of the broader initiative, Onno and his colleagues have produced an impressive and rapidly growing body of books and papers in the local language (Bahasa Indonesia) on the relevant technologies and their application in successful endeavors to expand Internet access and use in Indonesia.

Complementing those efforts, Onno and his associates are also engaged in advocacy work aimed at the adoption of public policies that will provide an enabling environment for the rapid expansion of Internet access and the development of a knowledge-based society.


The Problem

Although available data are sparse and inconsistent, there is wide agreement that Indonesia lags well behind many of its Asian neighbors in Internet access on a per capita basis. With a total population of some 240 million, Indonesia is the world’s fourth-ranked country by population size. Recent estimates suggest, however, that no more than 12-16 million Indonesians (five to seven percent of the country’s total population) enjoy even limited access to the Internet and that only some four million Indonesians use the Internet on a regular basis. For the vast bulk of Indonesians who are thus excluded from the use of that powerful knowledge-acquisition tool, the costs in terms of educational attainment, quality of life, and income-generating opportunities are substantial. And for the nation as a whole, which is struggling to maintain and expand its economic opportunities in an increasingly competitive world economy, the losses entailed by failing to keep pace in knowledge acquisition and dissemination pose a very grave threat.

The factors that underlie Indonesia’s relatively poor performance in bringing Internet access to its rapidly burgeoning population are many and varied. Some have their basis in geography—in the communications problems inherent in a vast archipelago stretching some 3,200 miles eastward from Sabang in northern Sumatra to Merauke in Irian Jaya. Others are associated with the country’s longstanding neglect of its educational infrastructure during a lengthy period of authoritarian rule, from which it emerged only some six years ago. But many of the most important—and more readily correctable—factors adversely affecting the prospects for a rapid expansion of Internet usage are to be found in regulatory measures and other public policies that have stifled creativity and otherwise impeded the development and spread of affordable internet access.


The Strategy

At the core of Onno’s efforts to democratize access to the Internet is a network, or virtual organization, composed mostly of young “techies” who share Onno’s commitment to engaging the bulk of Indonesia’s citizenry in knowledge-centered activities. The origins of that network can be traced to the establishment of a student club, the Computer Network Research Group (CNRG), at the prestigious Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB) in 1994, shortly after Onno, with a newly minted doctorate in electrical and computer engineering, joined the teaching staff of that institution. At Onno’s invitation, a number of talented students with a shared conviction of the Internet’s importance in building a knowledge-based society joined forces in the CNRG to advance awareness, understanding, and exploitation of the Internet’s potential.

In the ensuing years, the scope, scale, and impact of Onno’s network has rapidly assumed national (and even international) dimensions. Network members have authored and published a wide array of books and articles in Bahasa Indonesia in an effort to reach wide audiences lacking English language skills. They have also served more directly as “change agents” at the community level by developing and experimenting with low-cost technologies for extending Internet access far beyond the confines of premier academic institutions and in disseminating the results of those initiatives. And particularly since 2000, when Onno left ITB’s teaching staff to devote his full energies to broadening Internet access and usage as the major vehicle for the creation of a knowledge-based society, the growing ranks of network members have played a central role in amplifying the impact of Onno’s work.

In their endeavors to extend affordable Internet access to previously excluded communities and citizen groups, Onno and his network colleagues have employed, experimented with, and refined a low-cost Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) technology approach. WiFi is essentially the use of radio (instead of a telephone line or cable) for the most user-proximate stage of Internet access. It employs off-the-shelf, relatively low-cost Wireless LAN (Local Area Network) equipment, and its range can be extended to cover an entire neighborhood by a simple external antenna. (The antenna can be locally produced and marketed at a unit price in the US $15-20 range, or alternatively, a homemade version can readily be constructed using a metal potato-chip can.) The radio equipment normally uses the 2.4 GHz (gigahertz) band width, and it operates at 11 Mbps (megabits, or millions of bits, per second), thus achieving a significantly higher speed than conventional dial-up Internet access. In varied settings across Indonesia, experiments with locally-managed and self-financed WiFi systems that have been facilitated by members of Onno’s network have successfully demonstrated that they can provide Internet access of higher speed and quality than conventional dial-up systems offer at a cost per household in the US$15-45 per month range for 24-hour access—a cost that is dramatically lower than that of dial-up systems. The WiFi system’s cost is admittedly still well beyond the means of typical low-income Indonesian households, but it is affordable for growing numbers of middle-income families. Onno estimates that approximately 200,000 neighborhood users have already been connected to the Internet as a direct result of his and his associate’s work “How-to” instructions for the creation of such systems are now available on an “open source” basis, as are soft copies of related books and articles, on the network’s Internet site, and the stage has thus been set for an accelerated growth in the number and reach of such systems.

Onno and his associates are also engaged in continuing efforts to bring Internet access and usage
to growing numbers of educational institutions and their students, particularly at the high school, vocational school, and university levels. Although the relevant official data appear to be seriously flawed and inconsistent, Onno reports that there are some 220,000 schools in Indonesia, including 10,000 high schools, 4,000 vocational schools, and 1,300 public and private universities, only a small minority of which currently enjoy Internet access. (Onno estimates that the number of educational institutions in Indonesia that are currently linked to the internet is in the 4,000+ range, including some 200 universities and 270 vocational schools.) In a multi-pronged campaign to expand those numbers and to encourage those schools to develop programs that encourage and equip their students to make effective use of the educational opportunities that the Internet provides, Onno and his network colleagues have organized meetings, seminars, and workshops with school administrators and teachers in more than 3,000 schools in major cities throughout the country. They have also developed and experimented with low-cost strategies for providing schools with Internet linkage (including e-mail service for their students) on a limited connection time basis. And they are engaged, as well, in continuing lobbying efforts aimed at encouraging national government officials to invest the resources required to bring the knowledge-acquiring benefits of the Internet to a rapidly increasing portion of Indonesia’s vast student population.

Onno and his associates are also engaged in continuing advocacy work with national government officials to assure a more enabling environment for their efforts to bring low-cost Internet access to communities that cannot currently afford that service. The importance of that advocacy work is illustrated by problems initially encountered, and a victory recently achieved, in employing the WiFi system noted above in bringing affordable Internet access to previously excluded communities. Early efforts to introduce that system ran afoul of government regulations requiring a license (that proved to be impossible to obtain) to broadcast on the 2.4GHz band width that the WiFi systems employ. Fortunately, however, a campaign to change those regulations, in which Onno and his network colleagues joined forces with two other groups (the Internet Service Provider Association and the Internet Café Association), met with success, and in early January of this year the government liberated the 2.4GHz band width for public use with no licensing requirement.

While most of Onno’s efforts over the past decade have focused on Indonesia, the community-based work in which he and his associates are engaged has attracted considerable attention in other settings. In December 2003, Onno played a very active role at the United Nations-sponsored, Swiss Government-hosted World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), where his presentations on community-based ICT (Information and Communications Technology) development attracted a wide audience. As a result, Onno has recently been invited to conduct workshops on low-cost, community-based strategies for Internet access in several other countries, including Bangladesh, India, and South Africa, and he is engaged in lively E-mail dialogue with like-minded individuals in a wide array of overseas settings.


The Person

Onno was born in Bandung, West Java, in 1962 and raised there in an intellectually stimulating family setting. His strong commitment to working for the betterment of society and the empowerment of his less advantaged fellow citizens was instilled by his late father, Hasan Poerbo, who spearheaded a bottom-up community development movement in Indonesia.

As a youngster, Onno enjoyed adventure, both physically through scouting activities and mountain climbing, and mentally through learning the principles of aerodynamics and short wave radios. In primary and secondary school, he displayed a growing interested in technology by building a viable model airplane and constructing his own amateur radio transmitter, and in the early 1980s, when computers were still rare in Indonesia, he persuaded friends in the Institute of Technology Bandung (ITB) community to let him experiment with and explore the innards of their computers.

In the mid-1980s, Onno went on to study electrical engineering at ITB, where he received a degree with honors and organized a student club that gathered together outmoded and broken down computers, repaired them, and created a computer network. In 1987, he undertook graduate studies in electrical and computer engineering in Canada, where he completed an M.Eng. degree at McMaster University in 1989 and a PhD. at the University of Waterloo in 1993.

When Onno returned to Indonesia upon completion of his graduate studies, he accepted a faculty appointment at ITB. There he quickly specialized in Internet technology and, together with his students, created a campus network of computers that eventually linked up some 27 institutions of higher learning. While at ITB, he also spearheaded the creation of a database for an on-line library system and traveled widely across Indonesia, and on several occasions abroad, to present his ideas at seminars and workshops and stimulate the creation of a broadly inclusive network, or virtual organization, of like-minded individuals committed to democratizing access to the internet and participation in knowledge-building endeavors.

In the late 1990s, the latter activities and concerns consumed a rapidly increasing share of his energies and passions, and, in 2000, he decided to abandon the “security” of the campus setting (with its guaranteed income and pension) in order to work full-time on transforming Indonesia into a knowledge-based, as contrasted with a predominantly manual labor-based, society.

source : Ashoka