The internship program for State Civil Servants (ASN) in West Papua Province is able to further encourage accelerated development in Bumi Cenderawasih. With this internship program, state civil servants are able to gain positive experience and of course further improve their knowledge and skills through a variety of learning.
The Center for Development, Education and Training of Planners (Pusbindiklatren) of the Ministry of National Development Planning / Bappenas has completed the ASN internship program, which activity is the result of collaboration with the USAID Collaboration project and the West Papua Provincial Government. The first batch of internship program was carried out in Jakarta for one month, and was attended by 18 State Civil Apparatus (ASN) representatives from various Regional Apparatus Organizations (OPD) of West Papua Regency and Province.
Since October 2 2023, the interns have gained a lot of very positive experiences and have also been able to further improve their knowledge and skills by learning from several ministries or institutions at once, such as the Ministry of National Development Planning / Bappenas, the Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri) and the Ministry of Finance (Ministry of Finance).
Acting Secretary of the Ministry of National Development Planning / Bappenas, Taufik Hanafi, explained that so far there is still a gap in the capacity of ASNs nationally, especially in those in Eastern Indonesia.
For this reason, an internship program collaboration initiative was carried out by ASN together with USAID, which collaboration is a very good step to be able to continue to encourage accelerated capacity building for regional governments (Pemda) in the Land of Papua.
During the internship program, facilities are provided for intern participants, who are ASN members in Papua, to be able to learn about the substance and also what management is like in the field of planning and budgeting while working at the Ministry of National Development Planning / Bappenas, Ministry of Home Affairs (Kemendagri) and the Ministry of Finance (Ministry of Finance).
It cannot be denied that the existence of a program like this is something that is very important, especially to prepare how to plan long-term development in Bumi Cenderawasih.
Meanwhile, the Director of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Jeff Cohen, said that the United States Government said it was very proud to be able to collaborate with Bappenas, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Home Affairs to continue to support the implementation of this very innovative internship program.
It is also hoped that all intern participants, who are ASN members in Papua, can apply their important experience to further strengthen reform and development in the easternmost province of the country.
It should be noted that Bappenas has an internship program for ASN, which will help with development planning and aims to further increase the capacity of ASN planners in the field of development planning through their direct work experience.
In the future, there will be an increase in capacity regarding how government is managed and there will also be increased community participation in regional development in Papua and West Papua Provinces for five years, namely in the period 2022 to 2027.
The internship program also aims to further optimize the management of Special Autonomy (Otsus) funds which are becoming increasingly late in the future, so that it can help accelerate improvements in community welfare, especially indigenous Papuans (OAP).
Not only with the internship program, but the Papua Provincial Government (Pemprov) together with the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) held data preparation and processing training activities for as many as 100 ASNs in their environment. Assistant for the Economy and People’s Welfare of Papua Province, Suzana Wanggai, said that this activity was a concrete manifestation of evidence of her party’s strong commitment to realizing One Papua Data through the availability of quality sectoral data.
One of the efforts to strengthen government performance is to strengthen good governance, so of course these activities will bring many positive benefits. It is also hoped that this training can further increase the capacity of Papuan ASN.
In the future, if the capacity regarding how to manage data from ASNs in Bumi Cenderawasih is successful in increasing, it will also strengthen coordination and communication between SKPDs and joint partnerships with BPS Papua which is the supervisor of sectoral data.
The State Administration Institute (LAN) also continues to encourage an increase in the capacity and quality of ASNs through developing ASN competencies in Papua, including in the three New Autonomous Regions (DOB) of Papua. The need for competency development can be carried out in various ways, one of which is through internships so that efforts to accelerate the transformation of government governance and improve the welfare of the people in Bumi Cenderawasih can be carried out. It is not impossible that the acceleration of development in Bumi Cenderawasih will be realized much more optimally, especially since this will be helped by the existence of an internship program for state civil servants (ASN) in Papua so that they also experience increased capacity.
