Manila-Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Indonesia shared the work undertaken on Open Data in the extractive industry sector in Indonesia, in RightsCon Southeast Asia 2015 on 24-25 March 2015. Rizky Ananda, researcher of PWYP Indonesia, had an opportunity to be speaker in the session “Open Data and Internet Governance in Southeast Asia” hosted by Hivos, along with other speakers, Miko Canares (Web Foundation), Klaikong Vaidhyakarn (Change Fusion), Valentina Sri Wijiati (SATUNAMA) and Muzayin (Universitas Islam Indonesia).

“Law on Public Information Disclosure (2008) as well as government’s initiative to develop open data portal (data.id) has been an opportunity to promote transparency in the extractive industries sector,” said Rizky to open her presentation.

PWYP’s remarkable product on open data movement is open data portal on the extractive revenue. However, PWYP Indonesia also empowered community living near the mining sites in Sanggau, West Kalimantan Province. Collaborating with Swandiri Isntitute, PWYP Indonesia assisted the community to use open data instrument and drone as tools to conduct spatial monitoring, especially to monitor the overlapped within mining concession or between mining and forestry concession. “The collected data are expected to bring substantial changes in the spatial planning policy in West Kalimantan Province,” added Rizky.

Huge enthusiasm has shown by the audience by raising several interesting questions. Audience from Myanmar raised a question on the government engagement strategy to promote Open Data Indonesia. “Since some of ASEAN countries still has a negative idea of Open Data, civil society have to use evidence-based advocacy strategy by providing the concrete evidence of Open Data’s significance,” said Rizky.

Other audiences gave high appreciation of PWYP’s work on Open Data by involving local community which directly impacted by mining activity. “I hope RightsCon Southeast Asia bring a new idea of Open Data for Southeast Asia countries. And hopefully, Open Data movement not only reach out the government, but also impacted the local community,” concluded Rizky.

In another hand, Miko from Web Foundation shared the experience in utilizing Open Data to promote budget transparency by collaborating with civil society in Indonesia. While Klaikong Vaidhyakarn from Change Fusion presented the collaboration of civil society and private sector in Mekong Region (Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand) to develop open data portal to improve governance.

At last, Muzayin from UII and Wiji from SATUNAMA delivered their view on freedom of information in Indonesia by analyzing the request of public information in terms of requester’s background, region, and ethnic group.