Silver Open Government Award: Fruitful Synergy Between Civil Society Organization and KPU

The Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) receives Silver Award (second place) in The Open Government Awards held in Paris, France (12/07). Perludem receives this award because of its API Pemilu initiative which deemed successful in encouraging Indonesian Election Commission (KPU) to make their electoral data and information into open data format. This in turn increases public trust and participation in the electoral process.

“API Pemilu is a proof that civil organization and government can very well cooperate in establishing better governance,” says the Executive Director of Perludem, Titi Anggraini, who represents Perludem to receive the Award in Paris, France (12/07).

Titi explains, pemiluapps.org is an initiative from civil society organization to channel the public’s need to participate in electoral process. This initiative will never be realized without strong commitment and willingness from Indonesian Election Commission (KPU) to cooperate with civil society organization.

Perludem expresses our highest appreciation to KPU for the commitment. The transparency and openness of election data are the result of cooperation between civil society organizations and KPU.

In its official Twitter account, KPU of Indonesia congratulates Perludem for the Award. “Congratulation to @perludem for the Silver Open Government Awards @juriardiantoro @ferryfkr @arifhakim66,” tweets @KPURI2016 (12/08).

A member of KPU, Ferry Kurnia Rizkiansyah, also congratulates Perludem for the Award via his personal Twitter account. “Congratulation to Perludem. I feel proud. Perludem receives Silver Award for their API Pemilu #transparansipemilu @perludem @pusatparlemen @opengovpart,” tweets Ferry (12/08).

A representative of Open Government Partnership, the institution which gives the award, Paul Maassen, says, the initiatives taken by all nominees of the awards can be used as a model to create better governance. Mr. Maassen says, all the winners of the awards have contributed to the increase of public participation in political process, improved the role of the government, and created new services with high social and commercial value.

“Given our current dismal political context where civil society has only limited space to take initiative, it is pretty amazing to see a progress made by civil society organization in cooperation with government. The initiatives taken by the recipients of this award can be considered as model to establish better governance,” says Paul Maassen in Paris (12/07).

The fundamental different between open data and mere data/information transparency is that open data format is machine-readable. Subsequently, via pemiluapps.org, the data can be freely acquired and used by IT programmers and web developers to create various applications based on various operating system platform such as Android, iOS, Windows, or web-based.

Perludem is able to successfully implement API Pemilu initiative only because Indonesian Election Commission (KPU) is willing to collaborate and cooperate with civil society organizations such as Perludem. Perludem expresses their deepest gratitude to KPU for the willingness and commitment.

Based on the data compiled in API Pemilu, Perludem then organized Hackathon: Code for Vote to produce digital applications for the 2014 Legislative Elections. The event was held in Bandung and there are 200 participants who successfully created around 40 applications.

Three months after Perludem’s Code for Vote, KPU initiated similar program called API KPU. In June 2014, KPU, in cooperation with Perludem, organized Code for Vote 2.0 using API KPU in Jakarta as anticipation for the 2014 Presidential Election. The success of the 2014 Presidential Election is more or less facilitated by API KPU initiative, given the political situation at that time was tense. Thanks to open data and data transparency, everybody during the end of the election was able to accept the election result wholeheartedly.

Perludem then prolong its cooperation with KPU by signing a five-year worth of Memorandum of Understanding. Since then, Open Data Program has become a standard practice in many election management bodies in Indonesia. For example, KPU of Surabaya organized Code for Vote 3.0 as anticipation for the 2015 Surabaya Local Election. And this year KPU of Banten will organize Banten Apps Challenge of 2016.

Open Government Partnership (OGP), the institution behind the Open Government Awards, states that the ecosystem of data in Indonesia has facilitated its government and EMBs to synergize all data transparency and openness initiative. Communities of civilians who fight for open data and information transparency are important aspect in increasing the integrity and public participation in the electoral process.

The 2016 Open Government Awards is the third ceremony since OGP was first established in 2011. There are 70 participant countries which has made more than 2.500 commitments to transform their government into a more open and accountable government.

Here the list of the Open Government Awards winners: First Prize: Yurii Bugai (Ukraine), ProZorro Open Procurement Platform, Second Prize: Titi Anggraini (Indonesia), API Pemilu; Third Prize: Carlos Chinchilla (Honduras), Construction Sector Transparency Initiative; Honorable Mention, Africa: Dalitso Kubalasa (Malawi), Construction Sector Transparency Initiative; Honorable Mention, Americas: Lorena Rivera del Paso (Mexico), Budget Transparency Portal; Honorable Mention, Asia: Undral Gombodorj (Mongolia), Check My Service; Honorable Mention, Europe: Arjan El-Fassed (The Netherlands), OpenSpending.

According to its official website (www.opengovpartnership.org), OGP is a multilateral organization which was established on September 20^th 2011 by eight countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States). The main activity of OGP is guarding the commitment made by 70 countries on transparency, public empowerment, fight against corruption, and the utilization of technology in order to strengthen governance. []

 

USEP HASAN SADIKIN