Bambang Muryanto, Yogyakarta – Many provinces across Indonesia have not properly implemented the Public Information Law, which was enacted in 2010, Public Information Commission (KIP) chairman Abdul Rahman Ma'mun said on Thursday.
"Only a handful of provincial administrations provide information on their financial reports on their websites, even though such information must be made public, and made available not only after being requested," Ma'mun said, citing an example in his remarks at a seminar on the implementation of public information availability at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta.
Ma'mun's statement constituted one of the results of evaluation and monitoring by KIP in all provinces throughout the country in 2011.
The seminar was held by UGM's sociopolitical school in cooperation with the Tifa Foundation to discuss the school's research on the dynamism of public information in regional administration management.
The study was carried out last year in four provinces – Aceh, Greater Jakarta, East Java and West Papua – and three regencies/cities – Banda Aceh, Surabaya and Manokwari.
Ma'mun further said that under the law on public information, local officials were obliged to announce information on financial affairs, but in reality they considered it confidential.
"Many officials consider the project budget list and budgeting plan confidential even though they openly deliberated it at the House of Representatives," he said.
Due to the absence of transparency on the financial reports, there have been many cases of information disputes and last year alone KIP received a total of 419 complaints. "The largest portion of the complaints dealt with financial reports," he added.
Responding to Ma'mun's remarks, the director of public communication at the Communications and Information Ministry, Tulus Subardjono, said many officials remained wary about the law on public information.
"Many public institutions are becoming increasingly afraid and they end up being too closed. Any new fund leakage forces them to be too closed," Tulus said.
Hasrul Hanif, one of the research team members, said the results of the study were not much different from the evaluation and monitoring by KIP last year. "Substantially, there was not much public information that could be easily accessed by the public," Hasrul said.
During the research, it was found that many public officials did not know about the law on public information. "Even in Jakarta, as the capital of the country and the information center, many officials do not know about the law," he said.
The research showed that the highest number of public information announcements was made by the East Java province and Surabaya city administration.
The research recommended that the regional administrations abide by the law and implement it by publicly announcing as much information as possible.
One of the research suggestions concerned the deliberation of regulations at the regional level – province, regency and city – accompanied by systematic dissemination on the importance of implementing the law on public information. It also suggested that a crash course to improve human resources related to public information availability be held in the relevant regions.