Now, the rattle of typing fingers spars with the shrill of cicadas fluttering above the nearby paddy fields. Inside, each bungalow is like an office, equipped with computers connected to a satellite in Hawaii for high-speed Internet transmissions. It's an ambitious plan. Computers are considered a luxury for Indonesia's 220 million people. The government barely has any budget for education, much less for IT programmes.
Computer education starts only in high school, if at all.
To make matters worse, the government has a habit of complicating the industry's rules rather than easing them. Earlier this year, a new law attempted to curtail foreign investment in multimedia. It was later scrapped after industry players protested it would stymie development. Mohamad Hikam admits there is a lack of direction and little cooperation between his department and other government departments responsible for IT, such as the Telecoms Ministry. Indonesians' English generally lags behind that of Indians, and of Filipinos, whose country is also a regional software centre.