Data Revolution (BOJ0001)

Issues to be addressed: The absence of integrated real time key basic data to support development programs Primary objective: Development of integrated real time data which is collected by the Dasa Wisma (group of 10 households at the village and subdistrict/urban ward level) data application Description of commitment: The availability of integrated, real time, verified data in the Dasa Wisma application incorporated into the data.go.id portal will facilitate better access and utilisation of data by all parties in decision making process OGP Challenge: Promoting data openness, based on real time integrated data Relevance: Availability of integrated data is critical for decision making process, and the integration of information available at Dasa Wisma to data.go.id portal will improve data accessibility for all parties Ambition: Strengthen village administration data governance towards “One Data Bojonegoro”, integrated to data.go.id national portal, which will strengthen open government practices in Bojonegoro

1. Data Revolution

Commitment Text

Objective: Development of integrated real time data, which is collected by “Dasa Wisma” (group of 10 households at the village and subdistrict/urban ward level) data application.

Description: The availability of integrated, real time, verified data in the Dasa Wisma application incorporated into the data.go.id portal will facilitate better access and utilisation of data by all parties in decision making process.

Ambition: Strengthen village administration data governance towards “One Data Bojonegoro”, integrated to data.go.id national portal, which will strengthen open government practices in Bojonegoro

Milestones

Year 2016:

1. Training of Dasa Wisma PKK organizers (family welfare program for group of 10 households) for data input (2 persons per village/urban village)

2. Completion of Dasa Wisma data entry process for all villages (a total of 430 villages/urban villages) in Bojonegoro

Year 2017:

3. Verification of data entered by Dasa Wisma PKK organizers as an integrated data of the Bojonegoro Regency Government

4. Development of visual dashboard for Dasa Wisma data application

5. Incorporation of Bojonegoro data into national data portal i.e., data.go.id

Commitment Overview

Commitment Aim

Overall Objective & Relevance

Prior to the formulation of this action plan, the Government of Bojonegoro identified that development programs had difficulties reaching their goals due to the lack of accurate and up-to-date real time basic data. As the UN members adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) following the 2030 Agenda, each country would need new tools for data collection and publication systems. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University suggests four distinct purposes of new data systems in the era of SDGs: (1) data for service delivery, (2) data for public management, (3) data for accountability of governments and businesses, and (4) data for measuring global and local achievements. ^{https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sustainable-development-data-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2015-05} The commitment addresses the absence of public, integrated basic data to support Bojonegoro’s development. The commitment aims to collect and update the data through an application named “Dashboard PKK” application prior to its incorporation into the national portal (data.go.id).

The Office of Communication and Informatics (Dinas Infokom) leads the implementation of this commitment, in collaboration with the organizers of the Dasa Wisma program. Dasa Wisma is a national family welfare program organized in groups of 10 households (dasa means “ten”; wisma means “house”). Dasa Wisma has been conducting a livelihood assessment of the household in rural and urban areas. The program was originally launched as part of a UN movement called ‘Data Revolution’ that aimed to improve monitoring of the SDGs. This assessment is now a routine evaluation the government of Indonesia leads to identify what are the most common vulnerabilities in the community. The data is used as input during government decision making, to improve efficiency in public spending. For example, it helps define how governmental subsidies can be disbursed or targeted across different communities (on health, education, etc.). The Dasa Wisma data collectors ask for information regarding family size, education level, income level, economic activities, home ownership status, among other. When the Dasa Wisma program started, this data was recorded into paper forms which was later gathered and entered in a central database. The long process resulted in outdated data and oftentimes inaccurate do to human error. The commitment proposes to improve the data collection system by creating an application to enter the information directly and making it public. It aims to tap into Dasa Wisma’s know-how and maintain this household-based data with the logic of Open Data (real-time, integrated and aggregate data). ^{Syaiful Huda, focus group discussions with Bojonegoro Institute (October 26, 2017).} This is in line with the “One Data Bojonegoro” initiative, which aims to integrate the regency’s data in Indonesia’s national portal (data.go.id). The commitment does not explain whether this information would be published in anonymity or if households are giving informed consent to having the information published online. However, the expectation is that the data published on the national portal is presented without disclosing sensitive and personal information.

The publication of accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive, open and accessible data on Indonesia’s national portal is clearly relevant to access to information. The Government of Bojonegoro claimed that involving Dasa Wisma members to collect data as a strategy for civic participation. To grow public’s trust of the data produced and ownership of development projects they have committed to involve female groups at the village level. However, the level of involvement of the women of Dasa Wisma only goes to the extent of collecting information following government guidelines that later feeds into a larger government process. Dasa Wisma represents a good opportunity for people mobilization towards development goals, using the existing structure to gather the necessary data. However, it does not constitute civic participation, as the commitment does not aim to involve the citizens in decision-making or to increase freedoms of assembly, expression or association.

Specificity and Potential Impact

The commitment’s specificity is high because it mentions clear and specific achievements. If fully implemented, it could have a moderate potential impact for it targets many structural and cultural changes of how the government and citizens perceive and make use of data by incorporating citizens into data collection and update. However, the commitment does not explain how the data is meant to be used and there is no guarantee if it will be functional in the course of designing and implementing future development programs for some remaining infrastructure and cultural barriers, such as differing levels of accessibility and of information literacy.

Completion
Substantial

Milestone 1.1 has been completed with delay. Some workshops for Dasa Wisma organizers took place in March and April of 2017, whereas in the initial plan they should have been completed before the end of 2016. The government of Bojonegoro established two training teams so that they could organize two events in the same time. The trainings were organized by district, such as Kasiman, Kedewan, Trucuk and Malo (March 17), Bojonegoro, Kalitidu and Ngasem (March 18), Baureno and Kepohbaru (March 24), Balen and Kapas (March 25), Sukosewu, Kedungadem and Sugihwaras (March 31), Kanor and Sumber Rejo (April 1), Temayang, Dander, Bubulan and Sekar (April 3), Tambakrejo, Ngraho, Margomulyo and Ngambon (April 4), Gayam and Purwosari (April 5). The number of participants on each training varied depending on how many villages were in each district. The organizer invited three people from each village consisting of one head of PKK and two Dasa Wisma members. The training was to prepare Dasa Wisma members in collecting the data.

Milestone 1.2 had not been completed by the end of 2017. It took extra time to do a total sampling of all villages in Bojonegoro due to geographical and cultural obstacles. Based on the latest update from the government (23 November 2017), an IRM researcher’s calculation found that 67.05 percent of total data has been inputted. ^{https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E5NsWJMuN7MHBUTgyhlnSSDWyidaI9dE?usp=sharing} The top three districts with almost all data inputted were Kedewan (95.91 percent), Ngambon (90.67 percent), and Bubulan (90.12 percent). And the lowest three districts were Kasiman (23.2 percent), Dander (47.84 percent) and Margomulyo (52.7 percent).

Information on how the verification process is happening is very limited. CSO representatives who met with the IRM researcher found the milestone was too ambitious in comparison with geographical contexts of the regency. The Bojonegoro Institute suggested that the government should prioritize target villages. ^{Focus group discussions with Bojonegoro Institute (October 26, 2017).} According to Joko Hadi Purnomo from IDFoS, “the government’s target to cover all the villages was too much.” ^{Focus group discussions with IDFOS (October 26, 2017).} This delayed the completion of Milestone 1.3, which depended on the finalization of Milestone 1.2. Since the data had not been completely collected and inputted, data verification also faced delays.

The completion of Milestone 1.4 was limited because the application is only for the purpose of data input. Bojonegoro Institute prepared the “Dashboard PKK”, a smartphone-based application. According to Syaiful Huda from Bojonegoro Institute, the application was meant for government officials for using the data to design future development programs, even though it was still in the initial process of development. The future of the application is still vague.

It is difficult to measure the achievement of Milestone 1.5. The IRM researcher has no clear indication on which data is to be incorporated in the national data portal. The researcher only gathered information indicating that the OGP tactical team sent raw data directly to the national operator (of data.go.id) and did not have access and the capacity to manage it. According to a last observation of the IRM researcher of the data.go.id on 30 November 2017, the data of Bojonegoro in the national portal is routine, basic statistical data from the Bojonegoro Statistics Bureau, and not the Dasa Wisma’s. ^{http://data.go.id/dataset?organization=bojonegoro&q=bojonegoro&_groups_limit=0}

Early results: did it open government?

Access to information: Marginal

Data Revolution has been one flagship commitment of Bojonegoro in Open Government. Its aim, as written, is to improve access to government-held data on community needs. The information would benefit from strengthening the current data collection program called Dasa Wisma with capacity building activities as well as an improved platform to display the data. The government believes that by having highly integrated data there would be improvement in the course of designing and implementing development projects in the regency.

Bojonegoro Institute has been working on the issue since the design process until developing the “Dashboard PKK” application for data entry and display. Syaiful Huda from Bojonegoro Institute mentioned that the commitment was similar to their program with Ford Foundation about strengthening public information accessibility. ^{Syaiful Huda, focus group discussions with Bojonegoro Institute (October 26, 2017).} In the course of the commitment, there have been workshops of capacity building for female groups from various places and level in Bojonegoro. These workshops have provided the Dasa Wisma collaborators with better tools to collect their community data. The Government of Bojonegoro and the Bojonegoro Institute have reached multiple communities and enlisted many new volunteers. However, the problem this commitment aims to address relates to the inaccuracy of data and its usefulness because of (1) the delays in publishing what is manually collected by the Dasa Wisma organizers, and (2) and accessibility. Capacity building can improve accuracy to a certain degree, but the main activities within this commitment to solve the issue, is the creation of the application to collect accurate, timely and integrated data and publish it on the national data platform. For this reason, the IRM researcher considers that the efforts to train new volunteers in multiple locations contributes to the amount of data collected, however it only improves access to information in a marginal way.

The government claimed the commitment targets civic participation but, according to the IRM Procedures Manual, civic participation should aim to create or improve citizens’ role in decision-making. Dasa Wisma members only played a role in collecting the data in accordance with the preexisting tools or guidelines. However, the IRM researcher could not find any effort in leveling up the role of the women group in the design of the process and tools as well as data analysis in the aftermath.

Data incorporation to the national data portal (1.5) is very much depending on the data operator at the national level. This is something unpredicted in the initial action plan. The plan mentioned local participants only, and did not notice the involvement of other key parties who are beyond the regency’s authority, i.e., the operator of data.go.id. Also, the technology platform difference between local and national levels has been one key barrier for the incorporation of Bojonegoro’s Dasa Wisma data into the national data portal.

Recommendations

The Bojonegoro Regency could carry these activities forward and expand their scope until they meet the planned objective. The IRM researcher recommends pursuing the creation of the data collection application for accurate and timely information and the publication of the data in the national portal. However, the government could consider expanding the role of the Dasa Wisma women and other community members. For example, they could involve them in defining the priorities of what data should be collected, where and how. Moreover, the Government could further work on making this data available and consumable to the community by providing the information and enabling platforms for offline discussion.