Indonesia Action Plan Review 2020-2022

This product consists of an IRM review of Indonesia’s 2020–2022 action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen.... The action plan is made up of 24 commitments that the IRM has filtered and clustered into 14. This review analyzes the strength of the action plan to contribute to implementation and results. For the commitment-by-commitment data, see Annex 1. For details regarding the methodology and indicators used by the IRM for this action plan review, see Section III: Methodology and IRM Indicators.

Overview of Indonesia’s 2020–2022 Action Plan

If fully implemented, Indonesia’s sixth action plan could better coordinate provision of social welfare, publish information on beneficial ownership, and increase transparency on public procurementTransparency in the procurement process can help combat corruption and waste that plagues a significant portion of public procurement budgets globally. Technical specifications: Commitments that aim t... More and COVID-19 spending. Commitments with more concrete and ambitious targets would strengthen the plan’s impact. Implementation will require greater political commitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action... within implementing agencies, mechanisms for beneficiary engagement, and regular communication with civil society.

Indonesia joined the OGP as a founding member in 2011. This report evaluates the design of Indonesia’s sixth action plan.

This action plan consists of 24 commitments, 20 of which continue from the previous action plan. The commitments are closely aligned with the policy priorities of Indonesia’s 2020–2024 Medium-Term National Development Plan (RPJMN), as well as the Sustainable Development GoalsOGP countries are experimenting with open government innovations to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 16+ which includes peaceful, just and inclusive societies... (SDGs). Most commitments carry forward initiatives from the previous action plan, including open parliament, access to justiceTo address barriers that prevent citizens from having their justice needs met, OGP participating governments are working to expand transparency, accountability, and inclusion into all systems of justi..., and access to election data. The action plan also builds on past commitments on beneficial ownership transparency, open contracting, and budget transparency. Additionally, it continues to address public service complaint resolution, access to social welfare data, participatory village governance, access to online health services portals, and One Data Indonesia. The action plan introduces new policy areas, such as a cross-cutting focus on improving public service provision for marginalized populations, as well as new commitments on protecting civic space and implementing social accountability measures at the local level. To aidMore and better information about aid helps partner countries and donor institutions plan and manage aid resources more effectively, parliaments and civil society to hold governments accountable for t... clarity and assessment, this report clusters commitments relating to judicial access (6–10), community development (4 and 12) and open parliament (19–24).

Indonesia’s action plan was developed in two separate parts. Commitments 1–18 were directly proposed by civil society, often many organizations acting together, and developed through a collaborative co-creation processCollaboration between government, civil society and other stakeholders (e.g., citizens, academics, private sector) is at the heart of the OGP process. Participating governments must ensure that a dive.... Compared to previous plans, there was increased engagement from groups working on women’s rights and legal aid, including civil society organizations from Papua, Aceh, and Bandung. While the secretariat provided informal feedback to CSOs on the seven suggested commitments that were not included in the action plan, in the future, it could document this feedback to fully meet the OGP Participation and Co-creation StandardsCollaboration between government, civil society and other stakeholders is at the heart of the OGP process. The Participation and Co-Creation Standards are intended to support this collaboration throug.... The open parliament commitments (19–24) were developed through a separate process at the House of Representatives, which expanded civil society participation compared to the previous plan but did not include parliamentarians’ participation. According to Open Government Indonesia and Open Parliament Indonesia, differences in regulations, budgets, and priorities pose challenges to an integrated co-creation process. However, if future commitments are to be presented in a unified plan, greater coordination between government and parliament would be beneficial. Overall, there is also need for expanded participation from parliamentarians, high-level government ministry stakeholders, and civil society organizations in the co-creation process, and for increased civil society participation within the multistakeholder steering committeeThe Steering Committee is OGP’s executive decision-making body. Its role is to develop, promote and safeguard OGP’s values, principles and interests; establish OGP’s core ideas, policies, and ru....

The action plan includes several promising commitments, although fewer than the previous plan. Commitment 1 would strengthen the transparency of public procurement, particularly during states of emergency like COVID-19. Commitments to integrate social welfare data into the Social Welfare Information System–Next Generation (SIKS-NG) online platform (Commitment 11) and to open public online access to COVID-19 budget information (Commitment 15) also have substantial potential for results. Additionally, Commitment 17 would open public access to the national beneficial ownership registry.[1] This commitment also responds to IRM recommendations in the previous design report. These promising commitments are examined in the next section (II).

The plan includes a positive continued effort to address shortcomings in legal aid provision (Commitments 6–10), with a valuable, cross-cutting focus on judicial access for women, disabled people, and other vulnerable populations. The commitments directly respond to an IRM recommendation in the previous design report to create an online platform where citizens can access information on legal aid (Commitment 7). Commitment 8 will improve the quantity, geographic distribution, and quality of legal aid services. However, the commitments do not specify numeric targets, nor financial and other resources to be made available, leaving ambiguity in their potential scope. Meanwhile, the commitments to assess judicial access do not include milestones to implement the assessments’ recommendations. Implementing this cluster of commitments should prioritize tangibly increasing the number of legal aid organizations and paralegals, particularly in underserved regions, and strengthening legal aid efforts on access to information. This cluster will require a parallel increase in the budget for legal aid reimbursement.

This plan also continues a positive effort to open the parliamentary process (Commitments 19–24). Namely, commitments that intend to institutionalize open parliament (Commitment 24) and to institute multistakeholder forums between parliamentarians and the public on substantive parliamentary information disclosure and transparency polices (Commitment 22) are constructive steps toward parliamentary openness. However, most of the commitments from the parliament are internally focused and limited in scope. They involve creation or updates of parliamentary websites and applications without sufficient mechanisms to ensure public participation. For example, Commitment 19 includes a milestone adding a public participation channel to the Legislative Information System (SILEG), but does not address the fact that the legislative information on SILEG is frequently outdated, particularly on controversial bills, which has limited user uptake.[2] Open-parliament commitments on digitization and reiteration of parliamentary online platforms may overlook the lack of political commitment from parliamentarians to meaningfully open up the legislative process and create more substantive pathways to citizen engagement, particularly on critical pieces of legislationCreating and passing legislation is one of the most effective ways of ensuring open government reforms have long-lasting effects on government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or r.... Future commitments could update parliamentary information-disclosure regulationGovernment reformers are developing regulations that enshrine values of transparency, participation, and accountability in government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or reforming ...; establish a fixed timeline for public disclosure of information on legislative plans, drafts, debates, passage, and evaluation; and systematize citizen feedback on the parliamentary legislative process.

Additionally, the plan offers incremental progress on the critical area of protecting civic space (Commitments 16 and 18). Given that civic space in Indonesia is categorized as “obstructed,”[3] the previous IRM design report recommended commitments responding to shrinking civic space. However, this plan’s commitments do not offer sufficient measures to address this issue in a meaningful and comprehensive way. For example, although Commitment 18 would research the rights to information, expression, and assembly, it lacks milestones to implement the resulting recommendations. Future plans could offer a platform for both government and civil society leaders to safeguard civic space more ambitiously.

Overall, despite a diverse thematic focus, most commitments are too weak to generate substantial impact. Several commitments that develop assessments and policies lack enforcement mechanisms, such as Commitments 6, 10, and 18. Additionally, like Commitment 19, some commitments do not provide for sufficient engagement with beneficiaries. Other commitments introduce measures in nationally relevant policy areas, but do not set ambitious targets in terms of scope. For instance, social accountability at the local level could target a higher percentage of Indonesia’s villages in future action plans (Commitment 12). For commitments without clear targets, Open Government Indonesia and implementing agencies could work with stakeholders to concretize milestones and indicators.

Given frequent turnover in implementing agencies, civil society stakeholders expressed concern about government commitment to implementation. When faced with personnel changes, these agencies could improve the handover process to support preservation of institutional memory and ensure the new staff’s commitment to implement the action plan. The implementing agencies could also strengthen communication and collaboration channels between government and civil society through regularly scheduled meetings.

Promising Commitments in Indonesia’s 2020–2022 Action Plan

The following review looks at the four commitments that the IRM identified as having the potential to realize the most promising results. This review will inform the IRM’s research approach to assess implementation in the results report. The IRM results report will build on the early identification of potential results from this review to contrast with the outcomes at the end of the action plan’s implementation period. This review also analyses challenges, opportunities, and recommendations for the learning and implementation process of this action plan.

Table 1. Promising commitments

[1] Beneficial owners are widely defined as those who ultimately control a corporate entity, even though they are not necessarily recorded as the legal owners of the company.

[2] Ravio Patra and Agus Wijayanto (Westminster Foundation for Democracy), interviews by IRM researcher, 2 Mar. 2021 and 11 Apr. 2021.

[3] Civicus, “Critical Voices Silenced, Impunity for Excessive Force And Unlawful Killings in Indonesia” (2 Jan. 2021), https://monitor.civicus.org/updates/2021/02/01/critical-voices-silenced-impunity-excessive-force-and-unlawful-killings-indonesia/.