Come say hi to us!

The Open Data Lab Jakarta keeps a packed agenda as the year-end draws closer. From now until the end of the year, we will be speaking and presenting at a number of events!

For the month of November, you could catch us at the following events:

• On 17 November at Arya Duta Hotel, Jakarta, we’ll be at the National Conference of Extractive Resources Governance organised by Publish What You Pay Indonesia, with the theme of “Extracting the Future: Managing Extractive Resources for Sustainable Development”. Our session takes place in the afternoon, where we will talk about the state of open data in Indonesia – from what open data means, its impacts and samples of how it is utilised in ways that affect our daily lives, to opportunities and challenges faced when opening data. We’ll also explore the Open Data Barometer and Indonesia’s performance that marked it as the biggest climber in this year’s Barometer.

• From 23 to 24 November in Manila, we will be attending the Asian Development Bank organised “GCF Knowledge Exchange and Learning Event”. Here we will be presenting our experiences and lessons learned from our Linking Freedom of Information and Open Data in Banda Aceh project, probing the ‘Responsive Open Data Model’ we developed. In this approach, we started from the “bottom up” by determining the information needs of citizens and civil society, which became the basis for the local government’s disclosure of data and later on allowed for the institutionalisation of open data practices in the city. Together with USAID’s Kinerja program, we also intend to start a dialogue with the session participants on the results, strengths, and weaknesses of the project—and more importantly, how they think the approach could be implemented and adopted in other contexts, for and beyond open data.

Following this, come December you could also find us:

• From 2 to 4 December, in Seoul, we will be at the International Workshop for Public Construction Transparency, with the theme “Sharing Korea’s Clean Construction System and Initiatives Around the World”. The Seoul Meeting is organised by UNDP Seoul Policy Centre and UNDP Global Anti-Corruption Initiative, in partnership with the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this event, we will talk about how we’ve developed, contributed, or supported approaches for effectively gaining and increasing public access to information and data. We’ll also dabble on the impacts these efforts have had on creating or enforcing policies, tackling what were and weren’t successful, and giving recommendations for others interested in doing similar work

• From 10 to 11 December, we’ll be at the “International Open Data Research Symposium Communication and Collaboration: Strengthening Digital Democracy” organised and hosted by Perludem in Jakarta. We’ll be sharing our expertise and gained insights in open data through two sessions: ‘From Research to Action’, where we’ll talk about the lessons we gained from open data practice across the region, and ‘Open Data and Citizen Participation’, in which, together with partners from other organisations, we will look at the role of open data in helping citizens to better understand and be informed about their government and participate meaningfully in governance.

• On 16 and 17 December, we’ll be over at the NDI-organised “Consolidating Democracy through Urban Innovation Government and Citizen Collaborative Works in Three Cities: Tangerang, Pontianak, and Mojokerto” workshop in Morrissey Hotel, Jakarta. The event will focus on exchanging experiences in building smart cities through urban innovations, technology, as well as open data. We’ll be divulging our thoughts and tips on providing data and information to citizens, exploring the value of transparency and innovation, and improving service efficiency, using our various projects and first-hand experiences from across Indonesia as basis.

• To cap it all off, the Jakarta Lab together with the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucracy Reform (KemPAN), will be organising and hosting a Public Event in mid-December, to showcase our collaborative efforts to open, share, and visualise data on the performance of local government units and national agencies on accountability, transparency, and good governance, using performance data collected by KemPAN since 2010. Follow us on Twitter @ODLabJkt to keep updated on this event!

If you’re going to any of the above events, send us a Tweet or tag us! We’d be happy to discuss projects, talk about possible collaborations, or just grab coffee together.

Finally, these events go hand-in-hand with the intense work and progress we’ve had the past months on our various projects. Adding to the above happenings, we’re organising open data workshops and trainings in the cities of Banda Aceh, Banyuwanggi, and Jakarta over the next months. If you find yourself in any of these areas and are interested in participating or learning more, do get in touch with us!