GENDER EQUALITY IN ICT

From September 2008 to January 2009, One Destination Center (ODC) and Suara Ibu Peduli (SIP) or Voice of Concerned Mothers (VCM) carried out “Turning Female into Techie,” a project aimed at alleviating digital divide among women, the gap between women with effective access to digital and information and communication technology (ICT) and those without access to it. When deprived of such access, women miss any opportunity that ICT could otherwise provide, be them educational, economic and employment opportunities—all of which can help improve the standard of living of women. The project is funded by Hivos and was carried out in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

Building on the assessment conducted by ODC prior to the project implementation, the project’s overall objective is to have SIP members learn ICT and apply it to their daily activities so these members will be able to empower themselves through opportunities described above, through the following programmatic components specifically designed to fit into the circumstances of SIP members:

• Establishing a multipurpose telecenter whereby members could gain access to information at the lowest cost possible;

• Re-developing SIP’s portal with the emphasis on having the website reflect SIP’s members’ interests and priorities;

• And building the ICT capacity of SIP members deemed capable of participating in the trainings.

Project background and justification

Interconnectivity of VoIP to other types of telecommunication networks in Indonesia remains an issue, as regulation imposed by the Indonesian government governs only outgoing calls from VoIP to telecommunication operators, not incoming calls from operators to VoIP.

This implies that the government does not fully integrate their numbers into e164arpa, the Electronic Number Mapping System association acknowledged by the International Telecommunication Union.

To deal with this problem, ODC will request ENUM number allocation from e164.org, a free provider operated by the Internet Telephony Users Association, a non-profit association. Just like e164arpa, e164.org allows users to register their normal home telephone line as a VoIP line. This will enable VR to reach VoIP clients or normal telephone numbers also registered to the e164.org database –complementing the already established system and providing an alternative to users to make their calls. To become part of e164.org, however, ODC needs to adjust VR's briker, to make it capable of running well under the SIP environment, the protocol used by e164.org. However, the project is limited to demonstrating a model applicable to other countries.

Project summary

Voice over Internet Protocol or IP telephony has become the sort of communication tool increasingly viable to use and capable of reducing the cost of phone calls that connect via the Internet. However, the implementation of VoIP in many countries (such as Indonesia) is facing a number of issues, some of which are:

• VoIP call is one-way, meaning that such a call can only be made from a computer-based terminal to an analog terminal, not vice versa. This is attributed to a limitation in calling methods available in the Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN), in which making a routing table from PSTN to a specific computer with connectivity is not yet possible;
• The VoIP design is still proprietary.