The Strategic Asia Policy Interchange is intended to explore alternative perspectives and options on critical issues of public and business interest. It is also intended to allow us to collectively filter out time bound implementable actions from a confusing universe of good ideas and hunches. By participating in the interchange you will bring your own views, concerns and prejudices to an open forum designed to challenge and refine these ideas. The result is a series of key recommendations to government, business and civil society institutions which help to forge a new vision of a future Indonesia. If you live and work in Indonesia or are interested in understanding what makes it tick, the Strategic Asia Policy Interchange is the place for you.

To kick start the programme, we will organize a series of discussions under the theme of “Policy Challenges for the New Government” in anticipation of the incoming new government in October 2009.  A 7-series discussion will be held to cover key policy challenges in the following areas: economy, politics and security, governance, productivity, environment, and globalization and foreign policy. Each discussion is designed to provide deeper insight about the various policy and implementation dilemmas around the issue and collectively provide strategic recommendations on realistic choices and workable strategies to address these challenges.  Strategic Asia will integrate these inputs into a set of policy briefs to be submitted to the new government for its consideration.  

The series will be organized as follows:  

        19^th August 2009 - Economic Challenges. The session will focus on the implications of the government’s economic policy choice in the face of the various challenges such as poverty, employment, galvanizing the real sector and other related development problems. 

        27^th August 2009 - Defense and Internal Security.  This segment of the policy interchange will focus on identifying and prioritizing the major threats to security in Indonesia such as relative threats posed by tensions with neighboring countries, terrorism, transnational crime, internal rebellion and what has been the Indonesian response in the democratic era to such threats and what if any is the defense and security policy, including preparedness of the police and military institutions as well as efforts to engage on the international stage to promote domestic security.

        3^rd September 2009 – Governance: Legal Certainty and Access to Justice.  Taking a historical perspective, this session will look at how far has Indonesia moved from rule by person to rule of law during the last decade, and what are the major policy challenges in ensuring that legal certainty also promotes justice and not just the letter of the law.

        10^th September 2009 – Productivity and Competitiveness. Focus of the session will be directed at the following issues: slow productivity growth, sluggish growth of the manufacturing and agriculture sectors, structural changes implications of the 1997 crisis – is there a need for an integrated policy on productivity?

        1^st October 2009 – Education and the Knowledge Sector. In a more open political and economic environment good policy making needs to be strategic, crosscutting, and timely. This session aims to identify the key challenges and priority steps in transforming the knowledge sector into a network of institutions that supports the government’s policy-making process based on collective, informed, systematic exploration of choices and public dialogues.

        8^th October 2009 – Environment and Renewable Energy. Featuring the initial result of a study on “The Feasibility of Green Economy in Indonesia”, this session will address questions related to the required policy instruments and institutional framework. This session will also look at the issue of growing competition for energy and raw materials often at great environmental cost and what are the options for renewable energy.

        15^th October 2009 – Globalization and Indonesia’s Foreign Policy.  The key question to be addressed in this session is how will Indonesia position itself in the face of the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly changing regional and global landscape, i.e. greater interdependence, rapid transmission of political and economic shocks, rising importance of Asia in the global map – many of which require a coordinated global or regional response.