Smart Economy: Smart City in Economic Context
Lately, we often heard the words Smart City in mass media. This term has a broad meaning and becomes an umbrella from many interpretations (and definitions). In Wikipedia, there are eight definitions which each of them discussing from their own contexts. The basic definition from Smart City, which I personally agree is the use of technology information and communication (TIC) to improve the city performance. Also, it improves humans’ dignity and value as social beings and reduces the cost / the consumption of the city’s energy. The cost reduction is needed so that processes in social life in urban effectively and efficiently working.
Bandung, as one of the metropolitan city in Indonesia, declared its intention to become a smart city. The Mayor of Bandung, Ridwan Kamil, announce a measurement called the index of happiness as a success benchmark of the smart city program, which will be proposed. There are several aspects in Smart City such as smart governance, smart economy, smart mobility, smart health, smart energy, and many more. Common people will be questioning themselves because this Smart City is created from the use of TIC technology. Then, what’s the difference between smart health and e-health, smart governance and e-governance, and others. In my opinion, the term “Smart” is highly developed than the term “e-“. The term used when an entity has already adopted the digital system / electronic or digitalization process. On the other hand, “smart” is more like the ability to model and predict so it can create a more productive workflow. In addition, smart means when a system can make its own decision (machine learning).
In this entry, I have the interest to discuss Smart Economy, with its biggest question “How TIC can be a media to improve the society’s economy level?” The key is with the use of TIC, then there’s a chance to create a new social network. Young generations are actively using social media. It can make them have greater information access, a wide social network so that they can reach a bigger audience. This utilization of potential will be positively supporting the technopreneur program. With equal access to the TIK for citizens, such as the availability of fast and cheap internet access, the small gap between society to new technology. All of that will make an enthusiastic economical activity easier seeing the business potential that can encourage the appearance of new entrepreneurs.
In my opinion, Smart Economy can be summarized into two things. First, it opens large information access that can improve the citizen’s chance to do effective economical activities. Second, Smart Economy can be beneficial for the business activity that currently running. It will reduce the operational cost, more productive, and grows in the context of sustainability. The next question is how to make a more productive and efficient business? One of the answers is Datafication or trying to present and record all of the business activities in the form of data. Therefore, business needs a discipline attitude/SOP to create: data entry, data gathering, data crawling, data analytics, and others.
Writer: Andry Alamsyah, S.Si, M.Sc
Lecturer of MBTI Faculty of Economics & Business, Telkom University.
