History (Sejarah)

The history of the ICT Centre (UPT. Pusat Teknologi Informasi dan Komunikasi), State University of Malang, can be summed up into two periods: early period and ICT rapid growth period, as elaborated below:

• The Early Period (1986-2008)

In 1986, the Computer Centre Unit (CCU) or Pusat Komputer (Puskom) was established to manage the academic process. To support the effort, State University of Malang organised the procurement of supporting infrastructure in the form of minicomputers, OMR (Optical Mark Reader) devices, and external tape backups.

The CCU produced several academic forms that could be scanned using the OMR devices and resulted in a digital output that was capable of being stored in the external tape backups. The academic forms were course enrolment forms, student attendance forms, student academic records, and course evaluation forms. Such academic processes continued for years with additional procurements of similar infrastructure to support the process in the early 1990s.

In 2002, a further ICT initiative was carried out by establishing an Information Systems Development Team (ISDT) in partnership with a third party consultant to develop a desktop system to manage the output from the OMR devices. To support the initiative, the University organised the procurement of more infrastructure, such as servers to contain the database and a backbone intranet using traditional UTP cable to connect the CCU to the faculties.

However, this initiative was regarded as unsuccessful as the desktop system still relied heavily on the same physical academic forms that had been in use since 1986. The ISDT was dismissed and a further ICT initiative was needed to deal with the lengthy and slow academic process that was unable to cope with the increase in the number of stakeholders.

• The ICT Rapid Growth Period (2008 to date)

In 2008, the rapid growth of ICT started as State University of Malang was given the BLU status by the Indonesian Ministry of Finance. With this BLU status, the University had more autonomy in managing its financial matters, such as the autonomy to hold a procurement for ICT-related infrastructure. A tremendous amount of investment was made by the University to prepare its infrastructure for further ICT initiatives.

In the same year, the CCU was upgraded to an ICT Centre with the added responsibility of supervising the installation of a fibre optical backbone throughout the University to supply a much faster network access. The ICT Centre was also given the task of pioneering the development of the University website and many information systems.

The rapid growth of the ICT in the University was reflected through the increase in the internet bandwidth from year after year since 2008. Based on the figure, the internet bandwidth grew from just one Mbps in 2008 up to 1,250 Mbps in 2016. In particular, the internet bandwidth experienced a significant growth after 2012 to support an ICT Revitalisation Policy, which was initiated by the University in April 2012.

The ICT Revitalisation Policy later resulted in the development of 22 new information systems to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the university management. These information systems are classified into four categories: academic information systems, supporting information systems, e-governance information systems and public access information systems. The users of these systems are all of the stakeholders, including the executives, the academics, the students, and the administrative staff.

 

Source: Irawan, Sandra. (2017). The mandated adoption and implementation of an academic information system: The case of an Indonesian University (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from Monash University Research Repository.