REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, MAKASSAR -- The Ministry of Communications and Informatics has launched a movement towards 100 smart cities by creating 25 smart cities in 25 districts and municipalities in the country.

"Currently, the local administrations are competing with one another in building smart cities, but only 25 municipalities and districts are qualified for this," Minister of Communications and Informatics, Rudiantara, stated in a video conference on "Smart City Indonesia Summit 2017: A Movement towards 100 Smart Cities" here on Monday.

Furthermore, other 75 smart cities will soon be formed, thus bringing to 100 the number of smart cities by 2019, the minister said.

Meanwhile, Arya N. Soemali, information technology services director of smart city platform provider Lintasarta, said his company is ready to support and provide platforms for smart cities.

"We have fiber optic infrastructures in 146 cities with the total length of 2,800 km across Indonesia, cloud applications, data centers with large capacity, 14,400 VSAT points and a number of applications to support smart cities," he said.

The company also cooperates with various institutes of higher learning, such as the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and Gadjah Mada University (UGM) to develop various applications which are suitable to the regions' needs.

Given the integrated platform, he added, the local administrations do not need to build their own applications, such as providing servers, devices, and human resources as they are very costly.

"They can save up to 50-60 percent if they work together with us and use our integrated platform," he said.

The movement towards 100 Smart City is a joint idea of the Ministry of Communications and Informatics, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Public Works and People's Housing, the National Development Planning Agency, the Presidential Staff Office, academics and a number of other parties.

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