Community Empowerment through

Digital Maternal and Neonatal Care Services in Indonesia

Falih Suaedi

, Nurul Jamila Hariani

Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia

Keywords: community empowerment, digital based service, public service, maternal and neonatal

Abstract: The transformation of public services from conventional to digital is being intensively conducted in

Indonesia. This is an effort toward achieving good governance and bureaucratic reform. In addition, digital-

based services are expected to increase the independence and participation of Indonesia’s citizens. Sidoarjo,

a city in East Java, Indonesia, has a digital maternal and neonatal care service which involves multiple

actors. This study aimed to examine community empowerment through the digital maternal and neonatal

care service in Sidoarjo. This research employed a qualitative method with a purposive technique to

determine the informants. This research found that the maternal and neonatal care service made the local

communities gain new abilities and ways to participate in the network of the government. The communities,

through multi-stage processes, improved their networking, communication and cooperation, and increased

the competence of the community to act as an influential participant in public services. In this case, the

communities were viewed as subjects or actors with the ability to develop. The community is not just a

participatory object as a whole, but it is made up of actors involved in the public service process.

1 INTRODUCTION

The transformation of public services from

conventional to digital is being intensively

conducted in Indonesia. Indonesia has launched a

series of political reforms since 1998. However, the

policy on bureaucratic reformation itself is still

unclear and vague. In 2008, the government

formulated a bureaucratic reform policy. The

purpose of the bureaucratic reform policy is to

improve the accountability of public services, reduce

corruption and improve competitive indexes. The

implementation of bureaucratic reform in Indonesia

is still significantly centralised on the Ministry of

Administrative and Bureaucratic Reforms (MABR),

which has the authority to control and evaluate the

implementation of bureaucratic reforms in local

government.

The centralisation of bureaucracy reform policy

reaped criticism because its roadmap is still

incomplete. The roadmap was designed without any

conceptual structure and linkage between the central

government and the local governments (Choi, 2009).

However, the Ministry of Administrative and

Bureaucratic Reform (MABR) held a public service

innovation competition. This triggered local

governments to compete with others to spawn

innovations in public services, especially digital-

based innovations. The concept of innovation itself

contains ideas of bureaucratic reform. Bureaucratic

reform is an effort to change the status quo to

meritocracy, better policies and improved public

services.

Innovation should be a core activity in the

public sector: it helps public services to improve

their performance and increase their public value, it

allows them to respond to the expectations of

citizens and to adapt to the needs of users and it

increases service efficiency and minimises costs

(Mulgan & Albury, 2003). Innovation is the process

of gaining ideas to improve the quality of public

services that benefit the community. This is an effort

to apply the principles of good governance and it is

also a form of bureaucratic reform in Indonesia.

Digital-based services are expected to increase the

independence and participation of its citizens.

Suaedi, F. and Hariani, N.

Community Empowerment through Digital Maternal and Neonatal Care Services in Indonesia.

DOI: 10.5220/0008818201530156

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs (ICoCSPA 2018), pages 153-156

ISBN: 978-989-758-393-3

153

One of the local governments that have made

digital-based innovations is Sidoarjo Regency.

Sidoarjo has a maternal and neonatal care service

which is digitally-based and collaborative, involving

multiple actors. The innovation of the maternal and

neonatal mortality program in Sidoarjo District was

and is unique and comprehensive. This is because

the program involves multi-sector actors. The

participants not only come from the government, but

also private individuals, NGOs, academicians,

expert practitioners and society as a whole. In this

case, a new concept emerged; that to empower

society is not necessarily like taking on the role of a

teacher who has knowledge, who conducts training

and who teaches the community. Instead, the

community is the subject in any public activity that

affects it. Therefore, the researcher is interested in

studying the community empowerment experienced

through this particular digital-based public service in

Sidoarjo Regency.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Empowerment

Empowerment is a rather complicated concept. The

term can be identified as a principal theory of

community psychology (Rappaport, 1987), and it is

a fundamental concept for communities to remedy

inequalities and to achieve the better and fairer

distribution of resources (Minker et al., 2001).

Empowerment can be defined through three

components: multi-dimensional, social and process

(Czuba, 1999). Empowerment is multi-dimensional

because it does not use only a single dimension but

rather, it involves various aspects such as sociology,

economics and psychology. Empowerment is a

social process because it involves society and the

interactions that exist in society. According to

Zimmerman (2000), empowerment can be seen in

the different levels of society itself: individuals,

organisations and communities. These levels are

closely related to one another. In community

empowerment, there is organisational

empowerment. Similarly, in organisational

empowerment, there must be individual

empowerment within the organisation itself.

2.2 Community Empowerment

Community empowerment is understood to be both

a process and a result (Laverack and Labonte, 2000).

As a process, empowerment is able to direct people's

capabilities into a force that allows them to act

effectively and efficiently in changing their lives and

the environment (Rich and Stocker, 2009).

Empowerment is the process of community

transformation from the previously incapable or not

knowing into a capable and knowledgeable society.

Empowerment is not just the process of increasing

knowledge and ability. The community

empowerment process promotes the participation of

people, organisations and communities to gain

increased individual and community control,

political efficacy, improved quality of life and social

justice (Makara, 1994). In this research, community

empowerment through a digital-based service in

Sidoarjo Regency is described by the empowerment

dimension, which is the result of the elaboration of

the Rapla community members and Bush et al

(2002).

The elaboration result is the dimension of

community empowerment consisting of four

components, including:

 Community Activation is understood to be the

community members’ participation in the

community problem-solving process, in the

creation of community groups, leaders, and

networks, and their involvement level and

relationship quality.

 Community Competences are required when

solving its problems. The competence of the

community is defined as the knowledge and

skills that the community has available to

solve its problems, including problem-specific

awareness, information dissemination skills,

and communication skills within and between

groups.

 Program Management Skills are understood to

be the ability of the community groups to use

evidence-based methods in identifying and

solving their problems during program

development, implementation and evaluation.

 The Creation of a Supportive Environment is

an ability to mobilise resources, including

political, social, intellectual and financial

resources.

3 METHOD

This study employed a qualitative method and tried

to describe the process of community empowerment

through the digital-based service in Sidoarjo

Regency using the domain of community

empowerment by Rapla and Bush (2002). A

purposive technique was used to choose the

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informants. The informants consisted of the

governments and communities involved in digital-

based services, whether as agents or users in

Sidoarjo Regency.

Data collection was done through various

activities: 1) defining the locations; 2) gaining

access and building relationships; 3) purposeful

sampling (informant determination); 4) collecting

the data; 5) recording the information; 6) solving the

field problems and 7) storing the data (Creswell,

2015). The data analysis technique was conducted

through data gathering, reduction and categorisation

(disassembling), data compilation (reassembling),

the interpretation of the data (interpreting) and

concluding (Yin, 2011).

4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The current health promotion policy and practice

places a high value on community development

work (Robinson and Elliott, 2000) because it aims to

enable communities to identify problems, develop

solutions and facilitate change (Blackburn, 2000). In

Sidoarjo district itself, community empowerment

through digital-based services occurs in its maternal

and neonatal care programs.

Firstly, the program empowered the participation

of the society through socialisation. Motivation

training was provided for all of the involved actors.

The primary concept was to mobilise the local

communities to address their health and social needs

and to work across all sectors to solve local

problems (Laverack and Wallerstein, 2001). Based

on the evidence in the field, this was done to make

each actor have the same level of awareness. In this

case, having the same awareness is an awareness of

maternal and neonatal death. They should also be

aware of the importance of maternal and neonatal

death cases. Furthermore, they will contribute to the

reduction of maternal and neonatal mortality.

Community development has been suggested as

offering “the most promising approach to reducing

health inequalities” (Labonte, 1990). It has been

seen of as a key strategy to mobilise citizens,

organisations and communities for health action and

to stimulate conditions for change. It is an approach

aimed at facilitating community groups and

individuals to "empower themselves", and one that

seeks "to recognise and value the health experience

and knowledge that exists in the community and to

use it for everyone's benefit" (Minkler, 1992). This

process was carried out through training and

learning on the handling of maternal and neonatal

mortality cases. Learning between the actors was

done primarily regarding a shared culture, science

and their social life. The approach conducted

through PKK and recitation groups is because the

community culture places more trust in the words of

religious leaders. At the second level, there were

healthcare agents/cadres in the community who are

specially trained to monitor and give first aid when

there are signs of an emergency related to maternal

or neonatal death. In this case, academics and

practitioners prepared software focused on

emergency handling that can be used by all parties

easily. The next level started to spread to the

medical context, which also assisted with the

software to allow the users to know what to do.

In the last stage, the community taught about

how to advocate regarding policies, and how to

promote digital-based health-care services to other

agencies or institutions.

Table 1: Community Empowerment Activities through

Digital-Based Public Services in Sidoarjo Regency

Domain

Activities

Community

Activation

- The engagement and deliberate

process between the government

and the communities.

- Involvement and engagement of

more stakeholders (such as Non-

Government Organisations,

recitation groups, donor agencies)

- Motivation classes and awareness

raising for all stakeholders

involved.

- Creating new networks with

recitation or religious groups such

as Fatayat from NU and Aisyiyah

from Muhammadiyah.

- Establishment of a Civil Society

Forum (FMM) and cadre, as the

motivator of Mother and Child

Health (MKIA)

Community

Competence

- The training of community

awareness and the raising of the

knowledge of high-risk pregnant

women through a group approach

Family Welfare Development

Group (PKK), recitation groups.

- Distribution of information

through community leaders or

respected people such as religious

leaders or ethnic leaders.

- Sharing information between

health workers who have mastered

the early handling of health and

society who understand the

Community Empowerment through Digital Maternal and Neonatal Care Services in Indonesia

155

cultural aspects

Management

Skills

Program

- The training of the management

program and team building skills

through regular meetings

- The training on the planning,

implementing and evaluating of

the used techniques through

regular meetings and deliberation.

- The training of the cadre of MKIA

and the members of FMM to

approach society through good

communication.

- Training improvements program

from the technical side (first

emergency management),

including knowledge (the risk of

pregnancy) and skills (using the

maternal and neonatal mortality

networks application)

Creation of

Supportive

Environment

- Training community members

(FMM, MKIA) and society to

increase their lobbying skills with

government or donor agencies.

- Advocating policymakers to

implement maternal and neonatal

handling policies through the local

government's program via the

Regional Department of Health,

funded by the Regional

Government Budget.

- Promoting better access to

different foundations (NGO,

USAID, Save The Children, RTI)

and expert resources

5 CONCLUSIONS

Community empowerment through the maternal and

neonatal care service in Sidoarjo has allowed the

communities to gain new abilities and ways to

participate in the network of the government. The

communities, through multi-stage processes, have

gained better networking abilities with the other

stakeholders such as NGOs and the private sector.

The level of communication and cooperation was

excellent and mutual. The competence, awareness

and knowledge of the communities increased to

position them as an influential participant in the

public service. The communities are viewed as

subjects or as actors who have the ability to develop.

The community is not just a lesser participatory

object, but it is also made up of actors involved in

the public services process. Therefore, to empower

society is not necessarily like being a teacher who

has knowledge and thought the community. Instead,

the community is the subject in relation to any

public activity that affects them.

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