West Lombok’s first independent review (assurance) report, using CoST’s data standards, showcases substantial progress in infrastructure transparency during its membership. 

The report demonstrates that laws passed in recent years, as a result of CoST West Lombok’s work, provide a solid foundation to become a national model for open and accountable infrastructure management. The laws focus on ensuring that data publication respects citizens’ privacy rights and improving public access to project data locally. 

Vitally, the review presents key findings on transport projects across transparency, performance, procurement, and competition, as well as implementation challenges, providing strategic Implications and priority recommendations.

Their first report highlights that the review process doesn’t duplicate existing systems, but shows strengths and weaknesses to improve decision-making and encourage greater accountability throughout project implementation. This included providing key information around: 

• proactive and reactive data publication, which ranged from 78% to 26%; 
• accuracy of data, showing strengths in early phases;
• the strongest and weakest areas of the infrastructure lifecycle; 
• private sector participation and price competition, which highlighted that fair and transparent tender information fosters healthier competition and better value for money. 

Potential areas for improvement include technical capacity, data systems, and enforcement. Key recommendations included: 

• enforcing data publication across the whole infrastructure cycle
• further legal reforms to strengthen data accuracy and responsiveness; 
• improve institutional capacity; 
• integration of local systems with national platforms through the data portal of CoST Indonesian members called INTRAS; 
• automated validation tools, templates, and quarterly audits; 
• enhanced public participation through open data feedback mechanisms. 

These recommendations are already aligned with CoST West Lombok’s ongoing work, including socialisation events and training for students, governments, media, civil society, private sector, and communities. 

Their successful launch of this report took place today, with around 40 people, including the Vice Regent, Nurul Adha, who launched the report on behalf of the Regent. He expressed appreciation to CoST and recommitted their relationship with CoST, including being the first Indonesian member to join, and expressed a desire to be a flagship model. As part of this, he mentioned that all the recommendations will be addressed by the government, and plans to undertake the independent review annually.

The chairperson of the MSG spoke about how the report has demonstrated the value of data through providing eye-opening insights, as well as commitments to improve their data platform, INTRAS. 

CoST West Lombok’s report contributes to the region’s transition toward transparent, efficient, and accountable infrastructure delivery aligned with CoST’s international standards. The report accompanies other work from the member, including participating in our Open Gov week webinar, discussing their plans to implement our new sustainability data standards, and launching their first Infrastructure Transparency Index, which showed strong progress in regulatory frameworks and digital platforms. 

Find out more about West Lombok’s work, past and present, through their Annual Workplan and their member page. The report will be published on the CoST website next week.