JAKARTA: (Bernama) Indonesia’s parliament on Tuesday (Oct 6) passed the One Data Indonesia Bill to be enacted as a new national law, strengthening the framework for government data used in development planning, budgeting, public services and the distribution of social assistance in the country.
The bill was approved at a plenary sitting led by House Speaker Puan Maharani, a day after the House’s Legislative Body and government representatives agreed on the final version, comprising 20 chapters and 141 articles.
Presenting the bill before the vote, Deputy Chairman of the House’s Legislative Body Sturman Panjaitan said accurate and high-quality data were essential to ensuring that public policies were properly targeted, transparent and accountable.
"When data is wrong, it is not only the numbers that are wrong, but justice that is harmed. Misdirected assistance, overlapping programmes and ineffective use of budgets often originate from one source, namely data that is not properly managed,” he said.
Sturman said the law new also establishes national basic data as a key government reference for development planning, fiscal policy and budgeting, social assistance distribution and other strategic needs.
Last June, the Communications and Digital Ministry said in a statement that the bill’s ‘once-only’ principle was intended to allow information already provided to the government to be securely reused across agencies, reducing the need for people to repeatedly submit the same data when accessing public services.
National Development Planning Minister Rachmat Pambudy said during parliamentary deliberations on Monday that the new law would strengthen and broaden the existing framework, according to media reports.
Rachmat, who also heads the National Development Planning Agency, said stronger data governance was intended to ensure government data were more timely, accurate and secure, supporting better policies, public services and government programmes. - Bernama
