Despite the fact that Jakarta and other big cities in Indonesia are still ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to digitalization and implementing new technologies, a survey by a local venture capital firm shows this is gradually changing as smaller cities and provinces outside Greater Jakarta are showing steady improvements in their digital competitiveness.

Venture capital firm East Ventures has just published a report titled ‘East Ventures - Digital Competitiveness Index (EV-DCI) 2022’, which assesses Indonesia's cities, provinces, and regions' digital competitiveness. In their study, they found that the gap between top-ranking and bottom-ranking regions narrowed from 2020 to 2021. The gap continued to narrow even further over the following year to 2022. Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Bekasi and Depok are topping the latest rankings.

Digital competitiveness in cities and regencies in Indonesia continues to show a positive trend. This can be seen by the median of EV-DCI 2022 for 157 cities and regencies having a score of 43.5 which has increased compared to the previous year (42.2 in 2021), and the previous 2 years, when the score was 36.7 (2020).

Moreover, the spread between the highest performing city and regency with the lowest is also getting narrower. According to the investment firm this indicates a decrease in the digital competitiveness gap. In 2020 and 2021, the gaps between the top ranking cities and regencies and those ast the bottom of the list were 52.2 and 48.2 respectively. This year, the gap decreased to 47.3. This finding also indicates that the middle and bottom groups are continuously growing and catching up to the top-ranked cities and regencies.

Consistent with the previous two reports, cities and regencies in the Jakarta Metropolitan area (Jabodetabek) and Java region still dominate the list. The top five are DKI Jakarta, Bandung City, Yogyakarta City, Bekasi City, and Depok City.

Outside the Jabodetabek region, other cities and regions have been improving their digital competitiveness steadily. Apart from Yogyakarta City with a remarkable rise from 9th to 3rd position in 2021 to 2022, the best performing regency was Sleman Regency, which rose five places to seventh in 2022. One of the cities and regions experiencing a substantial increase outside of Java is Bengkulu City, which rose 28 spots and is now ranked 14th.

Photo credit: Dikaseva