Susi Pudjiastuti, Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Indonesia
By Marlis Herni Afridah
Women in GovTech Special Report 2017.
Image: Didik Heriyanto
We try to use digitalisation and technology to send out and announce information and also gather and encourage our stakeholders. For example, we have online weather information that we send to fishermen's smartphones. We can reach people even in remote areas where internet infrastructure is already there.
One of the best effects of technology is that it creates a monitoring system. We want to increase socialisation of our programmes on sustainability, and transparency and efficiency of our budget, and to make more people more involved with us.
In the end, it's not only for the citizens, but also to make good governing easier because we have more eyes seeing it, we have more people participating. It's much easier to encourage our own people in the government to start being different and making a change.
We are also cracking down on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing by publishing socialising it, so we get full public support and we can crack down quite successfully. It’s not really zero now, but at least it's more than 90% less than before. People are backing us up fully and we can execute our punishment more effectively.
What has been the most exciting thing that you worked on in 2017?
This year we have seen several impacts on efficiency and budget. A lot of fishermen now get big size of tuna, they don't have to take so long and they get a lot of fish.
What makes me very happy is that actually we want to do good, and with discipline we can make things different and better.
What tool or technique particularly interests you for 2018?
We would like to be able to track illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing efficiently and easily. Second, I would like that fishermen can get the highest value they can in the market, and improve the supply chain so that they don't have to go to spend long hours and make the costs expensive.
In particular, we would like to use satellite systems that we are working on with many parties, including Global Fishing Watch and Google.
If you were to share one piece of advice that you learned in 2017, what would it be?
Leadership will always demand determination from the leader. So I think to continue, persistence and determination is very important. Even though sometimes it’s not easy to keep a high level of determination, because so many things frustrate you, but that's very important to define your destination. Without that it's very difficult.
What was the greatest challenge that you overcame in 2017?
Changing the establishment of the way bureaucrats do business as usual; changing that is not easy. Often more preference is given to procedure over outcome and results - that's always the difficulty. I have come here from being a commercial CEO, where only your logic and profitability and sense can run; it doesn't work in the government that way immediately, so you get to change a lot of things.
What book did you read in 2017 that most interested or inspired you?
Well, I don't read whole books anymore, just summaries. I mostly read newspapers, magazines and articles. I read about many things on environment, economy and little bit of politics, but mostly on environment and economy.
In the old days, I liked some short stories from Simone de Beauvoir. Also, Sartre, Tolstoy, Delderfield, and I like Kahlil Gibran too.
Who inspired you in 2017, and why?
I like strong, good people. I admire Obama’s leadership; how he tries to make people understand what he is doing; his determination on that is very obvious, very certain.
For the old figure, I like Gandhi for all his passions. Right now, I am not a person like him. With silence and slowness, he could make people understand. I guess the world right now is too hectic and too stressful to be able to follow that way.