Platform for Improved Legislative Data and Information (ID0106)

What issues does the commitment address?
 Access to legislative information on the House official website(www.dpr.go.id) is still limited and not yet updated.
 Data on legislative activities is still distributed across different channels, i.e. standing/ad-hoc committees and not yet fully integrated in a dedicated information system channel.
 Online platforms for public participation in legislative activities are still limited. Meanwhile, public aspirations are quite diverse.
 Unavailability of systematic flow and control unit in the management of information data of legislation

What is the commitment?
 To increase the data and information speed and quantity of ongoing legislative activities.
 Promoting public participation in legislative activities.

How does the commitment address the problem?
 Availability of a dedicated website and mobile based legislative application (Legislative Information System/Sileg) with the latest, fast and up-to-date information will facilitate public participation in legislative activities.
 Milestone:
 Availability of assessment and policy papers on data management and session record management (summarized report, minutes of meeting, and transcriptions).
 Increase in the number of transcribers and archivists in each committee to facilitate more legislative data and information.
 Publicly published summarized reports and transcriptions of legislative sessions in three House committees in faster, more accurate, and regular manners as a pilot project.
 Up-to-date and user-friendly dedicated application for legislation or Legislative Information System (Sileg).
 Availability of a public participation channel on the Sileg application. Public can access and deliver their input and aspiration towards Sileg through an interactive shout box and email. In the long run, public can submit input and aspiration through a specialized website related with Sileg.
 Availability of Standard Operational Procedure/SOP in the management of data and information of Sileg.

How does the commitment relate to OGP values?
 This commitment will open the access to more information, while improving the data quality. This is relevant with the transparency value.
 This commitment will also allow public commentary on ongoing legislative activities, which is relevant with public participation value

See action plan for detailed information on milestones.

1. Improvement of Data Management and Legislative Information Services

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

• To increase the data and information speed and quantity of ongoing legislative activities.
• Promoting public participation in legislative activities.

Milestones:

1. Formulation of Assessment Guidelines and Reports.
2. Advocacy of the recruitment of more functional staff members.
3. Capacity building of the Secretary General in the management of data and information.
4. Periodic monitoring and evaluation of publications of the legislative information system.
5. Serial Workshop, public testing, monitoring and evaluation of publications of the legislative information system.
6. Development of Sileg application.
7. Serial Focus Group Discussion (FGD), Workshop, Monitoring and Evaluation.

Start Date: September 2018                                                              End Date: August 2020

Context and Objectives

The House of Representatives (DPR) or the Parliament of Indonesia has three different functions: legislation, budgeting, and oversight of the government. As the legislative authority, the House incorporates public will into law. However, given Indonesia’s archipelagic geography, determining the public will directly from its citizens is challenging for members of Parliament.

With technological advances, communicating with constituents has become easier. Citizens can access public information on Parliament’s website at dpr.go.id and learn of legislation being drafted. However, the information on Parliament’s website is mostly limited and outdated. ^[157] It is possible for Parliament to have already concluded legislation before citizens have access to information they need in order to participate in the process. Additionally, Parliament’s information disclosure policy does not specifically regulate what legislative information should be made available concurrently with the legislation process.

Opening up public access to information is mandated by Law No. 14/2008 on Public Information Disclosure. ^[158] The Law explicitly states that the purpose of disclosing information to the public is important to encourage greater citizen participation in the process of policy-making.

Within Parliament, information disclosure is regulated further by House Regulation No.1/2010 on Information Disclosure. ^[159] The regulation specifies that all information pertaining to the organizational structure, programs, activities and performance, as well as an audited report of the House budget are deemed public information ^[160] that must be made available to the public. Exceptions ^[161] are made only for sensitive information that (i) may endanger national security, (ii) private information, (iii) confidential information, and (iv) undocumented information. Despite this regulation, Parliament has not consistently provided the most updated and recent public information on its website. Therefore, it has remained difficult for citizens to comprehensively inform themselves of House legislation.

Despite the Law and the House Regulation mandating proper information disclosure, Parliament has never established a clear compliance mechanism. For example, as access to legislative information remains low, citizen participation has also been strictly limited to conventional means, such as in-person participation and mail correspondence. ^[162]

To overcome this problem, Parliament developed a Legislative Information System (Sileg). It was intended to make it easier for citizens to access up-to-date and comprehensive legislative information. However, Parliament has not maintained the application ^[163] and it’s information is outdated and limited. A representative from the Indonesian Parliamentary Center (IPC) ^[164], which helped develop this commitment, stated a main problem was the lack of an enforcement mechanism to ensure Parliament’s compliance.

This commitment aims to redesign the Sileg application to better cater to the needs of an open parliamentary process. The current practice within Parliament is to publish legislative information after the legislative process has ended. This prevents the public voice from being considered during the legislative process. Therefore, the application will be designed to specifically ensure that Parliament publishes legislative information during the drafting stage, allowing citizens to access a draft law and form their opinions. The application will have a comment box for citizens to submit feedback directly.

Additionally, this commitment will build capacity of Parliament’s secretariat staff in managing legislative information and data. The House Secretariat will conduct routine evaluations to ensure compliance across Parliamentary work units.

Next Steps

This commitment presents equal challenges for both Parliament and citizens. Parliament must improve its information disclosure compliance.

In implementing this commitment, Parliament should focus on the following:

• Develop a clear information disclosure mechanism for all Parliamentary work units and commissions. This includes a clear, standard procedure for all units to follow when producing, developing, and publishing legislative information through the website and Sileg. The mechanism could specify the detailed procedure for how each information is disclosed, the format of documents to be used, a reasonable time gap between the publication of a legislative information and the schedule of subsequent activity relative to that legislation, and the inclusion of a clear narrative of the legislation being drafted; and
• In conjunction with development of the public feedback features on the Sileg application, Parliament can consider establishing a procedure that requires members of Parliament to provide reasoned responses to public comments. Additionally, the application might enable citizens to request feedback on how their opinion was taken into account or incorporated into legislation.

Furthermore, Parliament could also look into opportunities to either improve or integrate the following existing portals to encourage greater citizen participation:

• Parliament’s online public complaints registration and tracking portal (dpr.go.id),
• Parliament’s information service desk (PPID) portal (dpr.go.id), and
• Parliament’s electronic procurement (LPSE) portal (dpr.go.id).

[157] Ahmad Hanafi (Indonesian Parliamentary Center), interview by IRM researcher, 8 Mar. 2019.

[158] Government of Indonesia, “Undang-Undang No. 14/2008 tentang Keterbukaan Informasi Publik” (2008), http://dpr.go.id/doksetjen/dokumen/-Regulasi-UU-No.-14-Tahun-2008-Tentang-Keterbukaan-Informasi-Publik-1552380453.pdf.

[159] House of Representatives, “Peraturan DPR No. 1/2010 tentang Keterbukaan Informasi Publik di DPR RI” (2010), http://dpr.go.id/doksetjen/dokumen/-Regulasi-Peraturan-DPR-RI-No.-1-Tahun-2010-Tentang-Keterbukaan-Informasi-Publik-di-DPR-RI-1552380559.pdf.

[160] Ibid., 3.

[161] Ibid., 4.

[162] Ibid.

[163] Hanafi, interview.

[164] Ibid.

1. Improvement of Data Management and Legislative Information Services

Substantial:

The design of the online Legislative Information System (Sileg) was updated to improve usability and a 2020 regulation was passed on guidelines for implementing Sileg. [88] According to Open Parliament Indonesia, this facilitated greater legislative information availability, increasing the quantity and timeliness of published transcripts, as well as parliamentary meeting and discussion overviews. [89] The Westminster Foundation for Democracy added that the main improvement was the ability to track the stage of the legislative process for bills. [90] Nonetheless, draft bills on Sileg are still frequently not published in a timely manner, and public commenting via email remains non-functional. The sixth action plan endeavors to strengthen these features. Additionally, under this commitment, House Committees 1, 3, and 8 conducted pilot projects to improve reports and transcriptions of legislative sessions, but the results of these pilot projects were unknown by Open Parliament Indonesia. The number of transcribers and archivists in parliamentary committees increased from 30 to 60 between 2018 and 2020. However, no assessments or policy papers were published on data management and session record management. [91]