The benefits of public information disclosure can be measured by how much the user’s attention in knowing, utilizing, and giving feedback to the provided system. This principle is part of increasing the accountability and good governance process.
Therefore, Publish What You Pay Indonesia together with World Bank took initiative to conduct Participatory Need Assessment Workshop and Policy Dialogue last Friday (15/9). This workshop was carried out to improve public awareness of the transparency issue in the extractive sector. Furthermore, it is also intended to map the need for data availability, especially in the oil and gas and mining sectors for the Civil Society Organization (CSO) and media.
There are 15 participants as the organizational representative attended and participated in the full day activities. Facilitated by Prasetya Dwicahya, Public Sector Analyst World Bank, the first session of the workshop was introducing the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global initiative that has a role in promoting the standard of transparency and accountability in the natural resource governance.
Afterward, participants were asked to open the EITI 2016 report and observe the data available in it. Maryati Abdullah, the National Coordinator of PWYP Indonesia, facilitated this session by asking each participant to take note and give an opinion on the interesting data they found from the report.
A different perspective appears between representatives from CSO and media. As a user, this is possible considering that each institution has different concerns depending on the needs of the organization and the focus of each work. In this session, most participants got the benefits of the report presented, especially for those who had not been aware of the report.
The last session facilitated by Kevin Tan, UX Researcher World Bank, was carried out by showing the EITI portal page that was under development. The data portal that has not been released is intended to facilitate users in understanding the EITI report which usually contains a lot of information, both in the form of narrative as well as table and infographic. According to Kevin, the new EITI data portal will contain more effective and interesting information through information processing and simplification based on the annual report.
Actively, participants were asked to open the portal through their personal electronic devices and begin discussions and provide input, especially in terms of presentation (visual) and supporting features. Both of these are crucial due to the principle of user-friendly and can be a determinant of the success system.
Efforts to accelerate the mainstreaming of extractive sector data disclosure to the public through this workshop are EITI way in improving services according to standard and understand how the data provided can meet the work needs/programs of the parties (CSO and media).
The joint commitment of Indonesia has been started since the issuance of Presidential Regulation number 26/2010 concerning Transparency of State Revenues and Regional Revenues from the Extractive Industry. Since then, the Government of Indonesia launched the first EITI Report in 2013. The report quality is regularly evaluated and adjusted to the need along the time.
In the future, EITI Indonesia wants to improve the quality of data availability, referring to the latest EITI standard. Other information that will be available in the future report will cover the socioeconomic aspect, trade commodities, gender classification, and Beneficial Ownership. Specifically for Beneficial Ownership, this step has initiated through the drafting of a multi-party road map between the government, private sector, and civil society, and will be implemented in the EITI report in 2021. (AN)