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ndonesia still has plenty of work to do to ensure that cross-agency information sharing is working following the endorsement of ASEAN’s Our Eyes initiative, defense observers said on Monday.

Mufti Makarim, executive director at the Institute for Defense Security and Peace Studies (IDSPS), said cross-agency intelligence sharing currently did not exist in Indonesia.

“Such a cooperation scheme is often challenged by the fact that information sharing can only be done between equal intelligence agencies,” he told The Jakarta Post over the phone.

He went on to give an example, saying that information collected by the Indonesian Military’s Strategic Intelligence Agency (BAIS) normally would not be shared with the Defense Ministry or the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).

At the same time, he added, there was a need to ensure that participating countries, which may have different defense issues amid common threats in the region, would be willing to share specific information.

“There is no need for intelligence sharing cooperation if the countries don’t give comprehensive, rigid or specific information,” he said.

Our Eyes was initiated in January 2017 by Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu following the Marawi siege in May 2017.

The initiative — focusing on terrorism, radicalism, violent extremism and other non-traditional threats in the region — was set up to support regional governments in fighting the Islamic State-centric threat.

The initiative was complemented with the Trilateral Cooperative Agreement (TCA) between Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia to secure the Sulu waters.

Our Eyes then involved Singapore and Brunei as observers, making the five countries the founding members of the initiative.

The next step will be expanding the cooperation beyond defense and military to also include law enforcement and national security agencies, the ministry said in a release.

Echoing Mufti, Fitriani, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that as Our Eyes was founded by ASEAN’s maritime countries, it might be difficult to convince the continental countries to share particular intelligence information.

“The continental countries have different defense issues, as well as interests, than those of the maritime countries. We need to see to what extent they want to open up,” she told the Post over the phone.

“Therefore, Indonesia and other maritime countries need to figure out how to convince them to openly share their information.”

Fitriani also said the Defense Ministry should hold a coordination meeting with the country’s intelligence agencies to put themselves on the same page regarding Our Eyes and cross-body information sharing.

“We need to figure out who will coordinate the mechanism within the country, who will handle the information management, who will verify the data, and so on,” she said.

Nonetheless, she emphasized, the challenge of cross-institution intelligence sharing was not only Indonesia’s hurdle as it was also faced by other ASEAN countries.

The ministry’s director general for defense strategy, Maj. Gen. M Nakir told the Post briefly that Indonesia’s intelligence agencies must have agreed on cross-body information sharing considering that ASEAN countries, as well as the bloc’s partners such as the United States and Japan, had supported the initiative.

“That is exactly the aim of Our Eyes: gathering intelligence bodies to share their information on threats. The international parties have agreed, they must have agreed too,” he said, dodging a question about whether the ministry had coordinated with the country’s intelligence agencies.

Our Eyes was endorsed by all ASEAN member states at the 5th ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) in Singapore on Saturday.

Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the US also expressed their interest in joining the initiative and pledged support and assistance to develop Our Eyes.