Impact of policy changes on ITC’s efforts in capacity building

The infographic on this page relates three components that have shaped the context in which ITC operates. On top ITC's own history. On the timeline the changes of ITC's full name reflect the development of the domain in which ITC is active. It started as International Training Centre for Aerial survey (ITC), later Earth Sciences was added, than Aerial survey was replaced by Aero space Surveys, and today ITC is the Faculty of Geoinformation Sciences and Earth Observation. The profile of the buildings that housed ITC over time represent our geographic journey [see [2]].

In the centre of the infographic the different Ministers responsible for development aid and her/his political signature [see [3]]. The attitude to development is reflected in the name of the Ministry responsible. In 1965 it starts of as Ministry of Development Aid, in 1971 this changed to Development Cooperation, and since 2012 it is about Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation. Although poverty reduction has always been a focus topic, these days the topics water, food, health and climate are also in focus.

These developments also influenced the relation between ITC and the stakeholders in the target countries, from more paternalistic to equal partnership. In Indonesia this can be seen in the project related travels. In the twentieth century, visits of ITC were of long duration with long assignments, nowadays these are short trips only.

ITC has been active in Indonesia for a large part of its existence. Some of the collaborations go back to the late 60s and 70s of last century. This long period illustrates the way in which activities have been adapted to policies of the Netherlands Government and other conditions. Over time the way of working in partnerships has changed from long-term projects with resident staff to large collaborative projects with local partners, including alumni [See page 14: 1 staff travel]. The main aim in the early days of these collaborations was to establish and support institutions that would operate as a engine for generating change, gradually taking over the role that ITC has been playing. The long-term partnerships made it possible to build up a critical mass of well-educated staff with the capacity to take on leadership roles in their own organization and contribute to a change in the way of working.

Examples of these early corporations are the establishment of the Faculty of Geography at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta, building up the Centre for Education in Photogrammetry and Cartography (PPFK) at the Technical University Bandung (ITB), the collaboration with the Indonesia’s National Mapping Agency Bakosurtanal, now the Geospatial Information Agency (BIG)), and collaboration with the training institute of the Ministry of Forestry (Balai Latihan Kehutanan, BLK), and the regional planning project in the Moluccas. In all these activities use was made of long- term resident postings of ITC staff.

Today alumni play a significant role in the collaborative projects, with ITC more in a coaching role at a distance. An example is GEOCAP(2014-2019). This goes together with a shift in funding from almost exclusively Netherlands official development assistance to Indonesian organizations such as LPDP and BRIN.

Indonesia is one of the counties with the largest alumni population [see [1]]. Over 1800 students have participated in all kinds of courses varying between two-week refresher courses on site, a two-year MSc, or a four year PhD program in the Netherlands. A quarter of the alumni is female, and courses in applied earth sciences have been most popular. The distribution of the alumni over Indonesia seems similar to the general population distribution but is skewed to the location of geo-related institutes and project activities over time; Ambon is a good example of this.