West Lombok, a member of CoST, the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative, recently published its first edition of the Infrastructure Transparency Index (ITI). The ITI is a tool developed by CoST International Secretariat which provides metrics on the levels of transparency in main infrastructure procuring entities at national or sub-national levels.

The ITI assesses level of transparency in public infrastructure procurement through four dimensions: enabling environment including regulatory frameworks and digital platforms; capacities and processes that facilitate transparency in procuring entities delivering public infrastructure; citizen participation mechanisms during the construction of public works; and disclosure of information on public works projects at different stages of their life cycle.

The West Lombok ITI general score is 31.4 out of a maximum of 100. The enabling environment dimension obtained the highest score at 59.7. The Capacity and processes dimension obtained the second highest score at 31.36, followed by the disclosure of information dimension with a score of 27.24. It is important to highlight that procuring entities in West Lombok have published data and information over a total of 2067 infrastructure projects via INTRAS –the Infrastructure Transparency Portal- (intras.lombokbaratkab.go.id), using the Open Contracting for Infrastructure Data Standard (OC4IDS).

The Citizen participation dimension was assessed with the lowest with a score of 10.44. One of the main findings points out that procuring entities do not have an official information staff dedicated to handling matters related to information requests and information disclosure.

Based on the findings, CoST West Lombok issued several recommendations to the public authorities to strengthen transparency in infrastructure projects, including the need to appoint or designating staff in each procuring entity or centrally handling matters related to information requests and infrastructure data disclosure in West Lombok Regency; increase the capacity and knowledge of staff in charge of delivering public infrastructure, especially in relationship to  data standards and sanctions for violating the data disclosure law.

Another group of recommendations indicates that public consultations need to be held for all infrastructure projects and train staff so that these processes can be well documented and then disclosure of information can be an easier task.

Regarding the procuring entities the scores range from 27.95 to 32.9 showing that even with the highest score (32.9) the entity has a significant improving opportunity. Like any other ITI ranking of procuring entities helps recognize good transparency practices, both in the disclosure of information on the public works they carry out and in institutional capacities.

Something interesting about the data per sample of projects is that projects with the highest and lowest ITI scores come from the same Procurement Entity: The Public Works Office in the Bina Marga field.

Applied consistently, ITI can be used to rank performance and monitor changes over time.  Collaboratively designed and based on international good practice and lessons learned, its objective is to provide stakeholders with quality information that serves to promote transparency and prompt improvements in the management of public infrastructure.

See the 2023 West Lombok ITI Results HERE