The first national data centre (PDN) in Indonesia, according to Minister of Communication and Informatics Johnny G. Plate, will be designed as a green government cloud built to Tier-4 standards – the best data centre standard in the world.
The PDN will be located about 40 kilometres from Jakarta and will have 25,000 processor cores, 40 Petabytes of storage, and 200 TB of memory.
“Everything is green and environmentally friendly. However, it’s not easy because you must meet the standards and certification requirements,” Minister Johnny explained to media workers after an inspection of the National Data Centre construction site in the Greenland International Industrial Centre Deltamas area of Cikarang, Bekasi, West Java.
According to Minister Johnny, the global Tier-4 International Standards require an uninterrupted data centre with a water-cooling system. Therefore, in terms of power supply or electricity, 20 Megawatts will be provided for the first time, with the capacity to be increased to 80 Megawatts to ensure its availability with no downtime.
Minister Johnny has encouraged the team to expedite the construction of Indonesia’s first National Data Centre (PDN). The centre’s construction is scheduled to last 24 months. The PDN’s effective operational date begins with fulfilling all contract precedent conditions. PDN construction has been underway for approximately two months since the project’s inception.
“I believe the progress is much faster than 8% because there is a lot of progress that is not physically visible, such as design issues or other management issues that have been completed, but these developments must be submitted regularly,” said Minister Johnny.
Nonetheless, the Minister of Communication and Information emphasised that he would conduct direct and periodic monitoring in the form of a progress review meeting so that construction could proceed more quickly and without incident.
Establishing this data centre is critical to support more efficient and effective state administration. PDN supports data interoperability to create One Data Indonesia or the government’s data-driven policy. According to the minister, the existence of PDN will benefit all government agencies’ services and the development of national digital talent.
According to Minster Johnny, the presence of PDN can support digital human resource development programmes. Including bolstering the Ministry of Communication and Information’s efforts to prepare digital literacy training, Digital Talent Scholarships, and Digital Leadership Academy to support the government in the SPBE framework, thevdigital economy, MSMEs and Ultra Micro Go Digital and various creations of innovations in the digital sector.
The first government data centre was built through a collaboration between Indonesia and France, with a contract value of EUR 164.6 million (US$175.64 million). Johnny explained that the French government is funding 85% of the development, and 15% is funded by pure Rupiah APBN. In addition, the French government has made a 15% down payment, or the equivalent of IDR 376 billion (US$24 million).
Meanwhile, in separate conversations, Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan, Director General of Informatics Applications at the Ministry of Communication and Informatics, revealed the PDN ecosystem includes cloud computing, big data analytics and artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the metaverse. Hence The National Data Centre is expected to result in intelligent and modern governance.
The Ministry has planned four PDN development sites: the Deltamas Industrial Estate (Jabodetabek) area, the Nongsa Digital Park (Batam) area, East Kalimantan’s new National Capital City (IKN), and Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara.
Following the initial PDN construction in Cikarang, West Java, the second PDN will be built in the Nongsa neighbourhood of Batam City, Riau Archipelago Province. At this location, a fibre optic network capable of connecting the area and its environs to western Indonesia already exists. The second PDN development site will be in IKN and Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara.