Digitalization of Social Protection Systems Policy in Indonesia as a Step Towards Society 5.0

— Society 5.0 refers to recently announced Japan’s vision towards a super smart society. It advances industrial-centered digital transformation from Industry 4.0, towards an all-encompassing human-centered development. One of Society 5.0’s demands is that people lives securely, with strengthened government’s safety nets against social issues such as poverty. Poverty remains a global challenge to be tackled in Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030, and previous literatures argued that Social Protection System is one of the core ingredients in poverty reduction. Indonesia has been applauded for successful reduction of its national poverty rate by half in past 20 years. While Indonesia also has an ambitious vision of near-zero poverty by 2045, World Bank warned that the issue of coverage of the country’s social protection system remains a challenge, especially if the system is to be future-ready. Social protection system in Indonesia has played an important role in delivering social assistances to poor households in the past two decades. Literature of digital transformation in Indonesia’s social protection policy is still limited, therefore, this research serves to fill the gap as well as providing general ideas for future research. Utilizing the theories of digital government, digital social protection system, and Society 5.0 as theoretical framework, this research discusses the digitalization of Indonesia’s Social Protection System and its possible contributions towards Society 5.0’s demand of safeguarding against poverty. This research argues that digitalization of social protection system is an important step towards achieving society 5.0 in terms of strengthening government’s social welfare policy based on two main reasons: It enhances government’s coverage in delivering social benefits towards society via data utilization to tackle poverty as a social challenge, and it serves as a form of government automation which integrates physical and cyber space in social benefits delivery to safeguard social welfare against future possible shocks.