By Monica Tanuhandaru & Inda Loekman (Kemitraan-Partnership for Governance Reform, Indonesia)

Decentralization policy enacted in early 2000 has challenged the quality of sub-nationa level delivery units and public services. To contribute to providing comprehesinve data required to accurately overcome these challenges, Kemitraan initiated to create an evidence-based policy making tool called the Indonesia Governance Index. IGI is an integrated and comprehensive measure of governance performance based on six good governance principles which are contributed by four key arenas, i.e. political office, bureaucracy, civil society and economic society. Each arena has its own weight of contribution to creating good governance.  The assessment applies a composite of both objective (i.e. local documents such as local budget, development planning documents, government records of activities, etc.) and subjective data (i.e. opinion of well-informed persons and scoring by researchers). It is structured not only measuring the development outcomes however also the governance processes to achieve the intended development outcomes. Although the data and computation behind it is complex, the presentation of IGI is aimed for a simple and intuitive reading.