Visited at his office at Jusuf Kalla School of Government building, Director of International Government Studies (IGOV) of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY) Eko Priyo Purnomo, Ph.D. confirmed that there are 7 students of IGOV joining an exchange program to Thailand for six months. “Six students will study at Khon Khaen University (KKU), and the other will study at  Thammashat University (TU). All of them are the third or fifth semester students,” he informed.

Besides, by his visiting to Thailand on 4-8 August, there were several important agendas conducted. The first was a meeting with Dean and staffs of Faculty of Humanities and Social Science and the Chairman of Public Administration Affairs. In this meeting, it was agreed the cooperation between IGOV and KKU in three areas, namely lecturer mobility, student mobility, and research publication.

“In lecturer mobility, in the next agenda we could send our lecturers to teach there for several months while in research publication cooperation some lecturers of IGOV are going to present their papers in the international conference of public administration at either UMY or Tokyo University this year,” he affirmed. He added that, dealing with student mobility, there is an agreement that students of Master of Governmental Studies can take double degree at UMY and KKU.

In the end of his visiting, he attended an international conference in the issue of “Globalization and New Public Services”. He presented his paper entitled b“The Current Practice of Citizen Participation in Indonesia Netizen and Selected Cases of Local Democracy in Indonesia”. In his presentation, he elaborated that in Indonesia there is a new medium for citizens to communicate with their governor and major city like in Jakarta, Bandung and Malang using social media. They can utilize Facebook and YouTube. The roles of social media in local government is essential although it is not legally established yet a space for dialogue and a public forum by local regulation.