How does the Satu Data Indonesia Secretariat improve data governance?  

Indonesia has embarked on a one data initiative to support the country's policy-making process. This One Data Indonesia policy aims to  standardise data governance at every level of government with the aim of creating quality data that is easy to access and can be shared between central and regional agencies.  

The Satu Data Indonesia (SDI) Secretariat, a unit under National Development Planning Agency, is responsible for implementing the policy.  

“Building trust is the most important thing in a cross-ministerial project like this. When data disputes occur, the team must work closely with data owners and other government partners to find solutions without the barriers of agencies' sectoral egos,” says Satu Data Indonesia Secretariat's Executive Director, Dini Maghfirra, to GovInsider. 

According to Dini, it is impossible to implement a top-down policy that applies to all ministries and agencies without trust as the basis for cooperation and coordination.  

"We are not talking about one or two ministries and agencies, but 84 ministries and agencies at the central level, 38 provinces, and 514 districts and cities throughout Indonesia."  

This year, 66 central government agencies have been connected to the SDI Portal, along with 31 provinces and 243 districts and cities across Indonesia, with a total of 390,000 datasets generated.   

She shares how the SDI Secretariat integrates data across government agencies and the challenges faced by the team thus far.  

Overcoming challenges with collaboration 

The SDI Secretariat is tasked with organising data governance in each government agency, formulating standards and guidelines in data governance, and establishing a data sharing system among agencies.  

The Secretariat also helps ensure that data producers follow existing standards and rules, have metadata, and are interoperable.  

The first thing to do is to establish a single data producer from each government agency and find out how capable they are of collecting and producing accurate and up-to-date data.  

Next, the team must ensure that SDI principles and standards are met, including data ownership, collecting data with consistent methods, and using the same dataset reference codes.  

"But how do all agencies comply with this process? The answer is to collaborate and engage more and more," she says.  

The SDI Secretariat works closely with ministries that have wider access to all government institutions, including the Ministry of PANRB, Ministry of Kominfo, Ministry of Home Affairs, BSSN and others so that the technical guidelines issued are more robust.  

To bridge the gap between the agencies’ capabilities to implement data governance, the SDI Secretariat built several data governance pilots at the regional level as centres of excellence. 

"We assume that the learning process will be more effective if local governments learn from peers who are at the same level and facing similar challenges," she continues.  

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Using AI to improve data catalogue system  

Dini explained that the SDI Secretariat is using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to improve the data catalogue system. The machine will automatically check whether the principles and standards of the data in the catalogue are met, ensure the metadata is available, and ensure the data entries are valid. 

"The AI will alert us if a piece of data does not fulfil these elements."  

The results of the AI analysis will then be submitted to the data owners, who are representatives from each ministry or institution. If there is anything that needs to be corrected, the SDI team will help them to do the correction by the specified deadline. 

Managing govtech data exchange platform 

With the formation of GovTech INA Digital, the SDI Secretariat will have the additional task of managing the data exchange platform, which is one of nine essential digital services. "GovTech will be the best example of how data governance and data interoperability can be tested at the government level," Dini explains. 

According to Dini, the Presidential Regulation that oversaw the creation of GovTech gives the SDI Secretariat the authority to not only manage aggregate data, but also manage personal data.  

The SDI Secretariat’s remit includes creating guidelines to standardise data use in all GovTech digital products to comply with standards and ensure that processes do not violate data privacy. 

“The data that will be used by GovTech will first be stored in an encrypted system. "Data will be provided when needed," she says. 

However, this effort requires a legislative umbrella to enable the SDI Secretariat to transact data by name and address, including collecting personal data from non-government agencies. 

Dini also emphasised that this new task requires a greater level of trust from government agencies and from the public, particularly in light of recent incidents of ransomware attacks. 

This article was originally published in Bahasa Indonesia