T

he Jakarta administration launched on Tuesday an open data website where residents can access data held by the city administration as part of its effort to achieve transparency.

Jakarta Development Planning Board (Bappeda) head Tuty Kusumawati said residents could access the city'€™s data through data.jakarta.go.id. She stated that Jakarta was the first regional government in Indonesia to provide such access for residents.

'€œWe will gradually open up all our data through the website in order to achieve transparency. We also want residents to understand more about the city administration,'€ Tuty said during the launch at City Hall.

She went on to say that currently there were 403 sets of data uploaded on the website, including that of the city budget. The establishment of the website, she said, was in line with Gubernatorial Regulation No. 181/2014 on system and management procedures of development data and information.

'€œWe also aim to fulfill residents'€™ right to information. Therefore, residents will be able to participate in monitoring and developing the city,'€ she said.

Visitors to the website can access data sorted into 10 categories; education, health, finance, transportation, population, environment, social, tourism and culture, public works and disaster management. A search bar is also available for quick finds.

However, much of the data sets uploaded on the website were currently not up to date, with some dating back to 2011. Many of the uploaded data sets can also be found elsewhere on the Internet.

Governor Basuki '€œAhok'€ Tjahaja Purnama acknowledged that the city'€™s open data system was far from perfect and said that working units had to update the data daily so residents would receive the newest information.

'€œIt is new so it still needs many improvements. Later, we also plan to upload the LHKPN [official wealth report forms] of city officials,'€ Ahok said.

He went on to say that he encouraged residents to not only access but also make use of the data.

During the same occasion, the city in cooperation with the Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative (SEATTI) and Making All Voices Count (MAVC) also launched the 2015 Hack Jakarta competition (#HackJak2015). This year marked the city'€™s second Hack Jakarta competition.

Communications and Informations Agency head Ii Karunia said that there would be three categories in the competition, which were Scrapathon, Visualthon and Hackathon. Thirty judges would choose three winners from each category.

Scrapathon is a data-scraping competition while Visualthon is a competition where participants must design an infographic on the city'€™s services.

Hackathon, the key event, is a competition where participants must make an application that facilitates both residents and the city administration in managing the city. Ii said that participants must use the city administration'€™s official data, which has been provided on the Internet in various websites, not only data.jakarta.go.id but also other websites. An incubation program would be conducted for winners of the competition.

Separately, SEATTI program development manager Shita Laksmi said that it would hold discussions with the city administration and communities to determine the kinds of applications, data or information needed.

'€œWe want the competition to produce things that the public need. For example, an application to call the Jakarta Fire Agency would be very useful for residents,'€ Shita said, adding that participants might also seek data offline.