Following up the sub-program of Village profiles compilation of two villages, the SurveyMETER team held an Internal discussion activity to deepen the material as well as experiment with data entry directly on the Prodeskel website. It took place on Thursday, March 21, 2013, in Meeting Room I of the SurveyMETER office.

The Prodeskel website is an online urban/rural villages data collection site where every data from the data collection of officers in urban/rural villages is directly entered on the site, instead of through the sub-district or district/city. This website is the latest innovation from the Directorate General of Village Community Empowerment, Ministry of Home Affairs, Republic of Indonesia. The problem found was not all village officials or data collection officers were familiar with this system and unable to use it. Furthermore, there was a lack of understanding of the importance of accurate and accountable data and how to process the data that has been entered for the benefit of making urban/rural villages policies in the future. In these areas, the SurveyMETER team focused on the assistance process. "Technically, it aims to deepen the data entry material prepared to conduct data entry training for Jatimulyo and Guwosari Villages in the process of making village profiles," said program coordinator, Setyo Pujiastuti. (read: Village Profile Compilation Discussion).

Having carried out the data entry experiment, the Surveymeter team encountered some obstacles and shortcomings. For example, the appearance and design of the printout form of data entry did not match the program's display flow on the website, program options did not include data such as that in the data collection manual, weak internet network access, and the overload users of the website. "By these findings, we can advocate the Ministry of Home Affairs regarding the lack of this urban/rural villages data design," Dani Alfah asserted in responding to the obstacles found in the program and this website.

"Actually, Indonesia is not ready yet with a data collection system like this, especially with the capacity of websites whose connections are still weak," said the senior programmer of SurveyMETER, Iip Umar Rifa'i, while mentioning several low-quality internet providers, but sold their products well in the market.

Meanwhile, another member of the mentoring team, Muhammad Mulia, suggested that the advocacy target from the village data obtained could be maximized directly to the Village Community Empowerment Office and the Bantul Regency Government. However, Dani Alfah disagreed and stated that the actual target of the advocacy was to share with village officials in using the data to improve village programs and policies in the future.

The practice of data entry was using data from Jatimulyo Village in 2011 which has not been entered on the website because the village officials were still unfamiliar with it. And then, on Monday, March 25, 2013, two officers of Jatimulyo village attended technical training on data entry on this website based on the findings and discussion results of the SurveyMETER team. “Next, in order to be faster in entering all data in Jatimulyo Village of 2011, the two Jatimulyo Village officers will be assisted by the SurveyMETER team. The target is that all 2011 data can be entered on the Prodeskel website so that the data can be viewed and assessed as well as be used by village officials,” said Setyo. She also explained that for data entry in 2012, the SurveyMETER team is conducting formatting the printout forms for village population data in accordance with the program flow on the Prodeskel website. [JF]