The Role of Social Infrastructure in ICT Adoption Program: A Perspective from the Indonesian Regional Innovation System

Abstract

Information and communication technology (ICT) adoption is nowadays regarded as an important program due to the fourth industrial revolution across the globe. In this study, we aimed to fill the literature gap by scrutinizing the role of social infrastructure in ICT adoption programs, which is still not much discussed. A perspective of regional innovation systems (RIS) was used because RIS key components resemble the concept of social infrastructure. We measured the implementation of the ICT adoption program in 19 cities in Indonesia by clustering them into two groups (strong and emerging innovators). To determine which social infrastructure indicators are most important in explaining the grouping, especially the strong one as the best practice, we additionally measured the F-test and t-test. The clustering results showed that cities in strong innovator clusters have homogeneously high performance in terms of the number of collaborations, local communities, and products that meet international standards. We suggest that such three indicators be taken into consideration in policymaking at the regional and national levels to improve the performance of the ICT adoption program.