Improving Documentation and Access to Information on Parliamentary Sessions (ID0108)
Overview
At-a-Glance
Action Plan: Indonesia Action Plan 2018-2020
Action Plan Cycle: 2018
Status:
Institutions
Lead Institution: (a) Leaders of the Indonesian House of Representatives, (b) Legislation Committee, (c) Secretary General of the Indonesian House of Representatives, (d) Head of Parliamentary Expertise Agency, (e) Deputy Secretary General on Sessions, (f) Head of Bureau for Parliamentary Leadership, (g) Head of Bureau for PR and Parliamentary Communications, (h) Head Bureau for Session I, (i) Head of Bureau for Session II, (j) Head of Data and Information Center, (k) Head of Public Relations Division, (l) Head of Division on Archive and Museum, (m) Information and Documentation Management Officials of the Indonesian House of Representatives (PPID) (n) IPC.
Support Institution(s): NA
Policy Areas
Open Parliament Plan, Open Parliaments, Sustainable Development GoalsIRM Review
IRM Report: Indonesia Transitional Results Report 2018-2020, Indonesia Design Report 2018-2020
Early Results: No IRM Data
Design i
Verifiable: Yes
Relevant to OGP Values: Yes
Ambition (see definition): Low
Implementation i
Description
What issues does this commitment address?
-Parliamentary information service is one of the key services to achieve an open and representative parliament.
-While Law No. 14 of 2008 on Public Information Transparency has been adopted and enacted, the Indonesian House is yet to fully implement proper information delivery service due to lack of data and cross-department coordination.
-Fast and reliable information and document delivery will potentially improve public participation in legislative activities.
What is the commitment?
Developing infrastructure for parliamentary transparency, in line with the Public Information Transparency Law.
Increasing the amount of information uploads on the parliamentary website.
Providing up-to-date minutes of meetings of at least the last 3 working days.
Improving the delivery of web-based information service (e-PPID).
Availability of information transparency rating tools for Complementary Organs of the House and Secretary General on a regular basis. This commitment will be demonstrated by the Information and Documentation Management Officials (PPID) collaborating with civil society.
How will the commitment address the problem?
This commitment will help the Indonesian House Secretariat accelerate coordination and data upload for public information purposes.
How does the commitment relate to OGP values?
This commitment will increase the amount of publicly available data and information. Thus, this commitment is consistent with the transparency value.
See action plan for additional information on commitment milestones.
IRM Midterm Status Summary
3. Promotion of Public Information Transparency of the Parliament
Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:
- Developing infrastructure for parliamentary transparency, in line with the Public Information Transparency Law.
- Increasing the amount of information uploads on the parliamentary website.
- Providing up-to-date minutes of meetings of at least the last 3 working days.
- Improving the delivery of web-based information service (e-PPID).
- Availability of information transparency rating tools for Complementary Organs of the House and Secretary General on a regular basis. This commitment will be demonstrated by the Information and Documentation Management Officials (PPID) collaborating with civil society.
Milestones:
- Workshop on guidelines on public information management.
- Development of evaluation tools.
- Implementation of evaluation tools.
- Launching of a rating tool.
- Revision of Regulation of the Indonesian House of Representatives.
Start Date: September 2018 End Date: July 2020
Context and Objectives
Similar to the first two commitments in the open parliament action plan, this commitment also aims to improve public access to information. However, this commitment focuses on strengthening Parliament’s capacity to monitor and evaluate information disclosure within Parliament.
Prior to this commitment, Parliament had initiated efforts to develop an evaluation tool to measure the implementation of information disclosure by its work units. The initiative reached a trial stage, but was never institutionalized. Through this commitment, Parliament hopes to renew development of this tool and institutionalize it as an official mechanism.
The evaluation tool will come with standardized publication guidelines for all Parliamentary information managers. The tool will allow monitoring of meeting minutes to ensure they’re published within a certain period of time following the meeting. By doing this, citizens will have access to more relevant information. (The current lag between a meeting and its minutes’ publication leaves citizens with irrelevant information.) [170]
To eliminate the long wait for publication of session and meeting notes, Parliament has been working on implementing a new method for note-taking. This new method allows minutes of meetings to summarize the most relevant information and omit repetitive or redundant details. Trial runs of this method resulted in a massive 2,726% increase in the number of minutes published by the eleven Commissions of the House from 183 briefs in 2016 to 5,171 briefs in 2017. [171]
Through this commitment, Parliament will implement this same policy across other Parliamentary work units and committees. To add incentive, the guideline will include a reward scheme for work units with the best information disclosure records as determined by the evaluation tool. The evaluation tool will be developed and implemented within the next two years as a peer-review mechanism [172] with staff and Parliament members rating the performance of information managers.
By the end of this action plan cycle, the focus of this commitment will be to propose and pass a Revision to the House Regulation on Information Disclosure. With the declaration of the Open Parliament Indonesia initiative, Parliament believes that revising this regulation is imperative.
This commitment carries minor potential impact to improve parliamentary openness. While the activities are mostly internal, the trial runs of publishing briefs instead of verbatim minutes suggest a strong potential to increase the amount of information available for the public. However, the brief format could allow Parliament to omit and self-censor the information released.
Next Steps
Going forward, Parliament should focus on training information managers to comply with the guidelines that will be developed. Since one milestone is to revise the House Regulation on Information Disclosure, Parliament could prioritize the following aspects for inclusion in the revision:
- Update Parliament’s Public Information List (DIP). It is important to carefully assess all types of information that are not currently included on the list. An impact assessment on parliamentary information could help ensure that Parliament properly complies with the principles of information disclosure;
- Update regulation around the structure, tasks, and functions of Parliament’s PPIDs to reflect recent changes and also to match public demand for making more information available upon request;
- Establish a clear, standardized information management procedure for Parliamentary work units. Standardize the format of documents released to the public; and
- Incorporate public participation in monitoring and evaluating Parliament’s information disclosure practice.
[170] Ahmad Hanafi (Indonesian Parliamentary Center), interview by IRM researcher, 8 Mar. 2019.
IRM End of Term Status Summary
3. Promotion of Public Information Transparency of the Parliament
Limited:
Guidelines on public information management for all committees and bureaus were produced addressing the responsibilities of teams involved in public information services. Despite these guidelines, it remains challenging for the public to gain access to information on politically sensitive legislation, like the Anti-Corruption Commission Amendment Bill or the Jobs Creation Omnibus Law. [96] A public information transparency tool was also produced, offering a checklist for committees to fill out. These self-assessments were sent to the Open Parliament Unit, which provided feedback and rankings to parliamentary units, but did not offer public access to the tool’s results. [97] This process took place in 2018 and 2019, but not in 2020 due to COVID-19. The tool is not standardized across committees and does not measure frequency or quality of data. Finally, the Regulation of the Indonesian House of Representatives No. 1 of 2010 on Public Information Transparency of the Indonesian House of Representatives was not revised due to political blockages. [98] According to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, this was the key component of this commitment, and its absence leaves access to parliamentary information at the ad hoc discretion of parliamentary units. [99]