From Taking Off EduTech Live to Emancipating Government-Technology Initiatives: Ira’s Humbling Journey to Empower through Education
Irawati Puteri believes words are most powerful when heard but extend further when put into action. Based on this belief, she has been applying her legal knowledge to a multitude of roles, aiming to empower the marginalized through her words and actions. In her academic career, she participated in national and international competitions covering a wide range of issues–from abolishing blasphemy laws and reforming abortion laws to evaluating nuclear proliferation. Outside of her academic career, she established Estafet Kebaikan in 2018, an effective altruistic organization that funds street children’s education and hosts free soft skills workshops, encouraging them to rediscover their self-worth. She then led the production of BukuBaik: Membagi Dimensi Fortuna Senandika (translated into English as Sharing Our Space for the Marginalized), a charity-purposed collaborative artwork compilation to voice out gender-based and domestic violence issues. The last is also published in an empowerment-themed poetry podcast by Apple Podcasts and Spotify–succeeded in gaining thousands of attention, helping 300+ marginalized households, tens of orphanages, and MSMEs impacted by Covid-19.
“On the surface, my background might not be a clear-cut “red string” that ties my mission in life. The path to becoming the person I am today has not been pursued linearly. Nor does it have to,” she says, “since all these multitudes make up an interesting life that enables me to contribute to a wider net.” On one occasion, she successfully represented an international securities company in arbitration proceedings against one of the largest and most pervasive securities frauds in the country’s history. On another occasion, she led the transformation of a nearly bankrupt subsidiary of a state-owned enterprise (SOE) into an electronic trading platform cooperating with one of the world’s largest software, data, and media companies, Bloomberg. She then took part as the review team for Indonesia’s Government Regulation on the Construction and Operation of Spaceports. “I love how limitless the opportunities to utilize the law to empower are.” Yet, after spending nearly three years as a corporate lawyer doing corporate transactions and arbitration disputes, passing the Indonesian bar exam, and being nominated as a Rising Star Lawyer for Asia Law 2021 from her practice group in her previous firm, she pivoted. To where and why?
“From an early age, I realized that education was my only way to break out of the poverty cycle and recast my family’s future. My father was orphaned at 9, he had to quit elementary school and start fending for himself. My mother had to quit high school at 16 so that her siblings could continue their education in her stead. They did their best to give me and my two younger brothers a better life, however, with their level of education, life was tough. I grew up in the slumbest neighborhood in Jakarta. We were very used to divide a portion of food into 5 and only able to eat beef once a year on Eid al-Adha — when well-off Moslems have a lot spare to the poor and needy. We were the poor and needy.” She reminisced, “I worked hard to excel in my studies, keeping the academic-merit-based scholarships that supported me in schools we couldn’t afford. Yet, I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve been told to settle to my family’s economic constraints. I thrived.”
As she became the backbone of her family during high school, she began participating in various debates and Model United Nations competitions for cash prizes and started tutoring out of desperation — before later falling in love with education. She started gaining further knowledge of layered social injustices and realizing the painful structural poverty she experienced firsthand, which further sparked her interest in pursuing a career that serves the pursuit of righteousness and enables her to fight against unjustness. “After tens of tutoring days, countless participations in debate competitions, and selling chicken nuggets at a county fair to pay for the university’s entrance test, I was blessed to be accepted into the best law school in Indonesia.”
“The miraculous opportunity and privilege of getting an education have helped me get to places I otherwise would not have had a chance to access. Hence, while my journey has been dynamic with multiple roles and interests, one has remained constant: I’ve been teaching to pay it forward.” For over 9 years, Ira has been an academic tutor, debate coach, and public speaking coach to her 150+ dearest students–including those with special needs, to touch and empower a generation. “I thought my proudest achievement as a tutor was when I helped the Indonesian team bring home 20+ gold medals in the Tournament of Champions-The World Scholar’s Cup. Yet, each of their accomplishments and joys — whether when they thanked me after successfully passing the entrance tests to their desired universities, managed to raise their scores, rediscovered their passion, or all of the above — is just as rewarding.” She concludes that, “despite the multidisciplinary sectors I’ve been in, the unifying ground is that I’ve always witnessed and experienced first-hand, how law and education combine and transcend to act as a magic wand for me in my life, enabling me to help and empower.” Hence, she wants to witness more of this through her magnificent work in GovTech Edu.
“Realizing that impact-driven is a key part of my life mission, I’ve been propelled to look for a legal career that allows me to live this value the most. I’ve always wanted to enhance equal access to education, and there is no better approach than to utilize technology.” Here she is now, leading the legal department at Govtech Edu, in her early 20s. Govtech Edu is Indonesia’s largest and most precedent-setting hybrid-government-private institution, directly assisting Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (MoECRT) to implement massive and long-lasting digital technology transformations to improve the standard of teaching, learning, and education in our country. In Govtech Edu, she works with 400+ passionate digital talents who strive to support MoECRT’s Edutech initiatives, empowering 25 million+ students, 3 million+ teachers, and over 200,000 schools and universities.
“MoECRT is leading the technological transformation in education in a way that fits with the shift in the organizational culture toward innovation. We are expected to innovate working methods between experts and bureaucrats. For example, I led the Legal team in proposing a “hybrid signing” for the Cooperation Agreement between MoECRT and foreign partners. We made a standard procedure for this type of signing to minimize roundtable meetings.”
In her work, she performs substantive legal analysis for the development of the MoECRT’s tech initiatives products end-to-end. She set up the product integration between MoECRT and the Ministry of Finance to make taxing and reporting for schools easier; drafted agreements to enable 900 undergraduate students to study abroad with government scholarships; guided data access across stakeholders; actively advised the MoECRT on diverse issues on the utilization and process of personal data, data security, and 3rd party involvement within the app ecosystem; and other intellectually challenging and fulfilling tech initiatives. “From my role, I’ve learned that technological disruption can significantly improve the efficacy of teamwork and make MoECRT (and Indonesia) a more pleasant partner for technology-related collaboration. I’ve been enjoying every inch of the learning curve and the intellectual challenges my work in this industry presents, as it keeps me constantly striving to comprehend more about law, education, and technology.”
However, there will always be two sides to a coin. Almost one and a half years in, she discovered major challenges. “Unlike Singapore and the United States, which have special teams within the government environment to develop digital services for the community (in-house), in Indonesia, each ministry has been developing its technology-based services by opening a bidding process that is planned, renewed, and conducted every fiscal year (outsource). These disconnected efforts might result in quality discrepancies between each ministerial digital service team, resources between their vendors, and turbulence in providing data integration, across the ministry. Hence, we are working hard on innovating a novel structure, seeking the best sustainable “home”, in an effort to ensure the sustainability of government-technology initiatives. Paving the way for other massive digital transformations in the future.”
She continues, “I believe, as needs for e-government services arise, enabling digital talents to channel their expertise for a mission-driven cause with a sustainable procurement mechanism, is just as widely anticipated.”
In line with our efforts to transform digital services at the government level and reevaluate the management of digital talents, she has been instrumental in pushing our collective proposal to set up a special purposed entity that offers digital technology services, houses digital experts, and specializes in catering to the government’s digital services across the ministries (the Agenda). Join us to wish her the best of luck in striking the Agenda!
