Andhyta F Utami

Indonesia has 140 million young people aged 19-39, which the government believes is the future asset for achieving “Golden 2045.” Yet, these young people don’t have enough space to be involved in Indonesian public policymaking and political literacy. Afu Utami creates an ecosystem for young people to participate in public policy and increase their literacy in politics and the democratic process.

Afu is building a climate-resilient, digitally enabled, and socially inclusive Indonesia by equipping young citizens and young civil servants to navigate the increasingly complex public policy landscape, based on empathy and evidence. Starting as a boot camp in 2019, in just four years, Think Policy has become a platform for young people to learn and become actively involved in public policy issues. To create a new ecosystem for better public policymaking in Indonesia, Afu focuses on both the supply and demand side. On the supply side, Afu creates spaces for young civil servants across ministries and government institutions to participate in the Think Policy Academy, where they learn about the policy-making process based on data-driven analysis and a strong emphasis on empathy and the importance of climate and social inclusion perspectives. Currently, most of these young professionals only focus on administrative work, and the current policy-making system has limited their role in the process. Think Policy Academy has successfully equipped more than 1400 young generation leaders within the ministries and government institutions to better understand policymaking and has led to various initiatives addressing public policy issues in Indonesia.

On the demand side, Afu has designed smart ways to engage young people on various issues related to public policy so they will be more active in giving positive inputs toward public policy in Indonesia and will request greater accountability. Leveraging her network from previous work with the leaders of many ministries and government institutions, Afu has created Ruang Tengah, an open forum for young people to discuss public policy directly with policymakers. It becomes a bridge to create mutual understanding between policymakers and the public and increase public trust in policymaking. Afu is also building a community through Think Policy Community, a program specifically designed to connect and nurture professionals and public policy enthusiasts across Indonesia, with more than 3000 members joining across 28 provinces in Indonesia.

Think Policy has successfully gained the trust of young people to learn and become actively involved in public policy issues, breaking the stereotype that young people are apathetic and not interested. Using the 2024 presidential election as momentum Afu created Bijak Memilih (Vote Wisely), an online platform for young people with key information: political party history, vision and mission, candidates’ program and track record, and even a list of former corruptors who became parliament candidates. Bijak Memilih partners with youth organizations and influencers to create social media content that is attractive to young people. During the election campaign, Bijak Memilih has successfully engaged more than two million young people across Indonesia. After the 2024 election ended, Bijak Memilih has transformed into Bijak Demokrasi (Democracy Wisely), which continues to educate young people in politics and democracy through Bijak Pilkada (Local Election Vote Wisely Program), Bijak Memantau (Supervise Public Policy Wisely Program), Komunitas Bijak (Wise Community Program) and Sekolah Bijak (School for Public Policy) to reach even more young people across Indonesia.

Indonesia and other countries globally are undergoing a significant transition driven by an existential threat (climate change) and opportunity (digital technology). Whether and how the country could deal with these intergenerational issues will determine its pathway toward the future of its 270 million population. Therefore, public policy needs to adapt to this quickly evolving landscape to effectively address various public issues, from food security and education to healthcare. Unfortunately, the government is still neglecting public participation in formulating public policy. Since 2018, many public policies, such as oil prices, the increase of student tuition fees, customs policy, and electricity, have been canceled because they were highly criticized by the people. At the local government level, thousands of policies were canceled because they didn’t align with the national program.

On the supply side, the underpinning culture of bureaucracy, risk averseness, and the lack of enabling conditions for innovation lead to business-as-usual processes incompatible with 21st-century challenges. With over 12-18 billion USD in state budget yearly, the lack of monitoring and evaluation processes leads to inefficiency. At the same time, there are issues of human capital (talents and leadership), non-participatory processes, and undervaluing of good solutions. The Indonesian bureaucracy was considered among the lowest quality in the world (Datta et al. 2017, 6). Due to weaknesses in training, promotion and compensation, cumbersome reporting requirements, and a lack of significant bureaucratic reforms, the public service continues to be ‘widely seen as corrupt, bloated, inefficient and either incapable or unwilling [to implement] policies set by the democratic government’ (Datta et al. 2017, 19).

This is a particular challenge for policymaking in Indonesia, as civil servants play an important role in drafting and implementing laws, regulations, and guidelines and participating in ‘regular planning, budgeting and accounting processes’ (Datta et al. 2017, 19). Research by the Knowledge Sector Initiative found significant gaps in the capability of civil servants, who often lacked the expertise and incentives to make well-informed policies (Sherlock and Djani 2015, 4). Even now, in the digital era, the World Bank (2016) research reports that by 2030, Indonesia needs nine million people with high-level digital literacy (Bank, 2020). This number includes civil servants (ASNs) with excellent digital competence. Improving the digital skills of ASNs will help supercharge efforts to modernize government. A lack of digital literacy among ASNs is a root cause of some of the challenges public-sector organizations face in adapting to and succeeding in the digital era.
On the social demand side, data shows that barely 8% of youth self-identify are politically engaged, even though voters under 40 made up the majority of electorates in the last 2024 election. Access to citizen education is not widespread, leaving them uninformed and mostly apathetic toward public policy.

Afu sees that the most important aspects of policy-making are data-driven and using empathy as the core basis, Afu carefully designed Think Policy into five core programs: 1) Think Policy Academy; 2) Think Policy Community; 3) Think Policy Advisory; 4) Think Policy Forum; and 5) Think Policy Insight. Think Policy Academy becomes the place for young professional civil servants to learn everything about public policy with different topics, study case learning, tailor-made curriculum design by the expert, and share best practices from policymakers. Moreover, the academy also becomes a space to create a network of next generation policymakers from various government institutions and even provincial government. This network is crucial because currently, young professional civil servants are only getting into the circle within their own institutions without knowing who in their peers also an interest has in becoming better policymakers. The bureaucratic system, by default, didn’t provide any space for them to explore their ideas and innovations to contribute to policymaking. In 2023, The Academy successfully engaged 67 institutions with more than 1400 participants & alumni.

In addition, Afu believes that there must be a huge demand from young people to participate in public policy issues, but they have no idea how to do so. And to attract more young people to the issue, she needs to create a safe space for them to meet with other public policy enthusiasts and professionals. Through the Think Policy Community program, Afu successfully connected and nurtured a network of more than 3000 professionals and citizens across 28 provinces. This includes engaging 11 new cities and districts with local projects and public discussions through ThinkHub & Local Shapers, a sub-program for local civil servants outside Jakarta. In 2023, more than 1000 new community members (ThinkTroops) joined the Think Policy Community, and Think Policy already connected them to more than 2000 policy professionals across climate change, digital and social inclusion issues.

Moreover, Afu has created Ruang Tengah as a forum to bridge diverse perspectives across generations and sectors. Ruang Tengah can become a public and private space where citizens can meet with the policymakers. Hearing the presentation from the policymakers giving direct input and making two-way dialogues. One of the successful public forums is the Think Policy Festival, a forum that gathers 400 public policy enthusiasts with 40 speakers representing central and local government, civil society, the private sector, and international research organizations across climate, digital, and social inclusion. This event shows how Afu can convince many layers of key stakeholders to be more open in discussing public policy. It creates new benchmarks and trends for other government institutions that are still afraid to be more transparent to the public.

Think Policy also successfully engaged 149 institutions through a series of private Ruang Tengah, which was initiated by multiple stakeholders. Think Policy acted as a facilitator that can convene these institutions in discussing better policymaking. It shows that many stakeholders started to trust Think Policy as a reputable organization that can play a bigger role in public policy issues in Indonesia. In addition, through an advisory program, Think Policy supported the delivery of nine strategic policy projects from digital transformation to climate transition, such as providing a regulatory sandbox model and benchmark study and implementing side-by-side with key ministries. Provided insights on digital governance policies and stakeholder analysis, analyzed industrial decarbonization, and provided pre-analysis of Jakarta Provincial Budget efficacy to the provincial government. In 2023, Afu also led a workshop on climate issues for 13 echelon 1 (Directorate General level) officials at the Ministry of Education and Culture, resulting in the selection of six climate initiatives and the strategic steps for the ministry to reach 60 million people from students, college students, teachers, schools, and campuses.

Afu sees that Indonesian youth have a big potential to demand the government to create better public policy in every sector. Afu built a platform called Bijak Memilih (Vote Wisely). This website-based platform provides information about the 2024 election, such as how many political parties participated in the election, the house representative candidates, the vision and mission president candidate and even the track record of each house representative candidate from city level to national. Afu used Bijak Memilih to give youth basic knowledge about politics, which is to use their vote carefully and start to learn about democracy. The 2024 election is the biggest Indonesian Election ever, and Afu uses it as momentum to gain attention from the youth. The platform is designed with an easy-to-understand infographic and combined with entertaining social media content through different social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram & X.

Bijak Memilih also partners with a youth-based independent media platform that curates Indonesian Socio-Politics in an accessible manner for Indonesian youths such as using memes, jokes, and pop culture references. It makes Bijak Memilih’s content suitable and easy to understand, even though it’s talking about a hard topic. Bijak Memilih’s website received more than 2 million visits from across Indonesia during the election period, and the social media post received more than a hundred thousand reach. In addition, Bijak Memilih created a series of offline forums that discuss election-related topics with different experts. It successfully hosted 58 different forums in 26 cities and regencies. This forum is also supported by the local community so that the topic can be curated for local contexts. The most powerful one was the Pemilu Festival (Election Festival), where Bijak Memilih invited all political parties to showcase their vision and mission, bring their house representative candidates to meet with the public, and answer questions from the audience. Festival Pemilu successfully gathered 18 political parties and 1112 participants who got the chance to meet at the festival. The festival is not free; the participant should pay for the ticket. It’s not the usual way in Indonesia, but somehow, thousands of young people are willing to pay and attend the festival. It successfully created another new benchmark and a new way to campaign.

From a young age, Afu has been a fan of many children’s books and magazines. She believes that reading books is the most enjoyable activity and that others should try it, too. While still in elementary school, she initiated a free public library for her neighbors in her front yard house. This early experience fostering a learning environment showcased her innate leadership qualities and dedication to education. In high school, Afu’s academic excellence was coupled with her active participation in competitions to maintain a scholarship, underscoring her commitment to her educational pursuits. She also became a student journalist, focusing on writing changemakers’ stories from her peer students, thereby highlighting her growing interest in social issues and community impact.

Her leadership journey took a significant leap forward during her university years when she founded Young Leader Indonesia. This initiative connected 1000 youth across Indonesia with numerous volunteering opportunities, conferences, and inclusive discussions, amplifying her impact and expanding her influence among her peers. This initiative brought her to join the youth venture summit hosted by Ashoka Indonesia and exposed her to the young changemakers network. Her participation in multiple Model United Nations (MUN) events has deepened her understanding of global issues and exposed her to become a social justice warrior, especially in the effort to solve many public issues in Indonesia.

After graduating from the University of Indonesia, she began her career as a climate program lead at the World Resources Institute (WRI). This role not only provided critical exposure to working with government institutions but also sparked her realization that innovation is crucial for solving public issues in Indonesia. This pivotal experience paved the way for her advanced studies at Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she earned her master’s degree while engaging with local government leaders from various countries, further enhancing her global perspective.

In 2019, Afu joined the World Bank in Indonesia, leveraging this opportunity to work closely with several ministries and engage top ministerial leaders, showcasing her ability to navigate and influence complex bureaucratic landscapes. In the same year, Afu led the establishment of Think Policy, which was a place where she spread her knowledge of public policy to young civil servants in Indonesia. Think Policy received positive feedback from the boot camp participants, led to many follow-up programs, and, in the end, became a stop platform for young professionals to learn, discuss, and have a safe space to contribute to public policy issues in Indonesia. In 2023, Afu resigned from the World Bank to fully commit to further developing Think Policy.