The Center for Political Studies at the University of Indonesia (UI) has launched a comprehensive online database of statistics and analysis related to political studies.
The center’s research and data manager, Dirga Ardiansa, said the database, accessible through the website datapolitik.org/gis/puskapol/, provided information on the country’s political landscape in the forms of tables, info graphics and geospatial maps.
“We are opening the database to the public to encourage researchers, consultants, NGOs and political parties to use and analyze the data independently according to their needs,” he said in a recent interview.
Dirga said that basically the center took the tabulations of votes for the 2004, 2009 and 2014 general elections from the General Elections Commission (KPU) and transformed the numbers into more meaningful and detailed graphics and a geospatial map.
“The data currently accessible is related to the 2009 and 2014 general elections. We are not ready to publish data related to the 2004 general elections because the KPU is still compiling it,” he said.
According to Dirga, the KPU published different kinds of vote recapitulations on each general election and was only concerned about votes for the House of Representatives (DPR).
He said that this made it difficult for the center to provide users with easily accessible details on vote distribution from the House level to the local Regional Legislative Council (DPRD).
On the website, users can see a geospatial map, which shows the distribution of votes among 10 national political parties in various areas, ranging from national to provincial to district levels in the 2014 legislative election.
The geospatial data is presented on the basis of electoral districts and administrative areas.
The map also has legends, which show information related to the range of values, such as the percentage of votes gained by political parties.
Dirga said that apart from the data on general elections, the website also provided data and information related to the Democracy Index, the Human Development Index and the Gender Development Index, which are at the regency or city level.
“This means we provide data not only in the context of general elections, but we are trying to focus on local politics at the regency or city level, as well as at the electoral districts,” he said.
He said the center planned to upload other data related to political studies, such as on the subjects of conflict risk and minimum wages in each regency or city.
He added that the center would update the database following regional head elections in the coming years.
Source/Fuente: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2014/06/23/ui-comprehensive-database-...
