Independen, Jakarta – The country’s Public Information Disclosure Act no. 14/2008 is entering its 11th year, however, only a few public bodies have adhered to the regulation.
“Our main problem is that not a lot of public bodies that have adhered themselves [to the law], only around 23 percent of the total 460 public bodies,” said Arif Adi Kuswardono, member of the Public Information Commission (KIP), in Jakarta recently.
According to the Commissioner, the lack of compliance was mostly caused by budget constraints, limited resources, and weak monitoring capacity.
“Another problem is that the regulation is not binding enough to compel them to obey. Even though all public bodies must comply, but KPI can only educate, campaign, and advocate,” Arif said.
So far, KPI can only bring those who refuse to comply with the Public Information Law to the State Administrative Court (PTUN). Once the Commission ruled that a certain piece of information should be made available to the public, then a government body must follow it up.
“PTUN or District Court or even the bailiff can [enforce] them. If [the request] was still not fulfilled, then the parties concerned can file a report to the Police, then it is a criminal case. So, there are some layers to the process,” Arif added.
The most basic problem of public information disclosure is that the officers of these public bodies could not distinguish between Public Information List (DIP) and Excluded Information List (DIK).
Arif further explained that regulation on the subject is already stated in the Law itself.
“The problem is that a lot of these organizations do not know the difference. They think that all information is DIK so that when a request was made for public information, it was denied,” he said.
This was readily admitted by the Head of Public Relations subdivision of the Public Information Service at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry Nuke Mutikania Mulyana. According to her, her unit at the Ministry still does not understand what public information openness means.
“I do not blame the unit. Because they do not have any special function, it is not stated in their duty and function that they have to [deal with] information [requests],” said Nuke at her office early March 2019.
Furthermore, Nuke said that workshops on public information disclosure had been intensively carried out within her Ministry. The problem is that when the workshops took place, the participants who represent their work units always changes. “If we invite [staffs] for a workshop today, A would come, [but] next month when we invite them, it’s B who shows up. So, they would ask the same question over again,” she said.
One of the most effective ways of understanding public information openness, besides participating in workshops, was to get directly involved in KIP’s adjudication hearing. In such hearings, public information staffs at the Ministry could learn more about public information disclosure.
“Sometimes having [information] dispute made me grateful, because then they can finally be more aware,” Nuke said.
In 2018, public information disclosure at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry was rated “Quite Informative” from previous year’s “Less Informative”.
Every year, KIP rated various public bodies on the levels of their public information openness. Starting from the lowest, “Not Informative”, followed by “Less Informative”, “Quite Informative”, “Almost Informative”, and the highest “Informative”.
