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Government not ready for information law rollout
The historic freedom of information law comes into force today with most state institutions, mired in a decades-long culture of secrecy, still in the dark over how to actually implement the law
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he historic freedom of information law comes into force today with most state institutions, mired in a decades-long culture of secrecy, still in the dark over how to actually implement the law.
The government has not yet issued the two required regulations — one regarding the mechanism to provide information and the other regarding the classified list of information closed to the public — to make the law effective.
“The Health Ministry and National Police have indicated they were gearing up for the implementation, but other institutions can’t seem to find the right way to implement it,” Communications and Information Technology Ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto said Tuesday.
“Our ministry has outlined the procedures for the implementation of the law and hope we can serve as a pilot project that other public institutions can mirror,” he added.
Gatot said his ministry would appoint a special official to be responsible for facilitating requests for information from the public, adding that he expected other public institutions to follow suit.
“This is a new, unprecedented regulation. It will affect executive, legislative and judiciary institutions, as well as other organizations including the NGOs receiving state funding. We’re thrilled and yet anxious to see how it works,” he said.
The country was ruled by a dictator for three decades before a popular uprising toppled Soeharto in 1998. Civil society groups have since called for transparency, but the public information law was only passed a decade later. The deadline for its implementation is April 30.
Gatot said the ministry was finalizing the draft of the government regulation on exemptions to the law, which was required to define what information would be exempted.
Certain information related to defense and security issues, business deals and diplomatic negotiations would be among those exempt from the law, and the institutions holding the information would not be obliged to disclose it upon request.
However, while the law threatens sanctions on those “intentionally using public information to violate the law”, questions have been raised as to how far public institutions would provide information to the public.
Gatot said another article in the law similarly stipulated sentences of one year in prison and fines of up to Rp 5 million for public institutions that refused to provide requested public information.
Agus Sudibyo of the Press Council emphasized the need for the government to take seriously the imposing of sanctions on public institutions refusing to comply with the law after it came into effect.
“Don’t accommodate more delays for the implementation of the law. Give public institutions a maximum of three months to adapt to the new regulation and set out consequences if they fail to do so. Otherwise the law will not be effective,” he said.
House of Representatives’ Commission I on information and defense affairs deputy chair Tubagus Hasanuddin summed up legislators’ doubts of the government’s readiness to implement the law.
Tubagus said committee members had met twice with Communications and Information Technology Ministry officials to speed up preparations for the full rollout of the law, but found that the government had not fully addressed certain aspects of the law such as funding and human resource issues.
