West Kalimantan launches open govt vision
By Medha Basu
The Indonesian province wants partnerships with homegrown startups and data-driven policies for rural areas.
Image: Government of West Kalimantan
“Through open data, we invite people to contribute more on delivering ideas to solve civic problems,” Sofiarti Dyah Anggunia, System Analyst in the West Kalimantan Government, told GovInsider. “We believe that by engaging citizens in government decision making, we might find innovative approaches to enhance social and economic development.” The website has published data on demography, government, economy, education, culture, public health and infrastructure in the province.
The government will hold data workshops to share the importance of this data with communities and startups, and how they can use it to tackle social and development challenges. “We need startups, private sectors, communities and people to promote the use of open data, specifically in West Kalimantan,” Anggunia said.
In particular, the provincial government wants to work with local homegrown startups to reuse this data. “We need their participation and ideas how to support socio-economic development in West Kalimantan,” she added.
The vision is that website will help integrate data from across the province for the government’s own use. In the future, this could “support evidence-based policy making that leads to strategic planning for improving public service delivery,” she believes, especially for rural development in West Kalimantan’s thousands of villages. “Data is then be used to make strategies for the improvement that should be implemented in certain villages.”
A key focus will be to improve the way the data is managed across the province. The tech infrastructure for this already exists: In 2018, the province connected data systems across 45 agencies so that civil servants can reuse data generated by other agencies.
The government will work on creating laws for data governance and a masterplan to manage standards of the data released by the government. “To do this, we must collaborate with other agencies. We will hold meetings with all stakeholders - both data producers and data consumers. Therefore, this regulation might provide data governance for all parties,” Anggunia explained.