Data Communication as a key to integrated river basin management

This article discusses data communication as a key to implement integrated water resource management (IWRM) in river basin management. The performance of a river basin is determined by many aspects/sectors which are managed by different level of governments and various agencies within them. Implementing IWRM requires integrated data information system provided by those various government agencies. Although it has been regulated in the Law No 17 Year 2019, integrated information system reliable to support decision-making process has not existed yet. This article reviews what is the condition of water related data in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management – the type of water related data, the data frequencies, and the data sharing mechanism. It aims to examine data communication among actors and supports the decision-making process in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management. There are three stages were undertaken to achieve this overall aim, that are 1) identifying the type of water-related data need be shared in sharing water resource from the literature; 2) identifying the availability of water-related data identified in the stage 1 in the existing data provided by government agencies; 3) conducting a series of focused group discussion (FGD) to elaborate the use of the available data to understand its limitations to support decisionmaking process. The research found that the implementation of IWRM in Bengawan Solo River Basin is difficult to be achieved because there is a lack of data communication among data providers. It points that the absence of data communication occurred because there is no definite data sharing framework specify what data need to be shared, the frequency of data collection and updating, and the mechanism in sharing data legitimated by all agencies involved in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management. Thus, it reveals that data cannot be used maximally to support effective river basin management not because of technology drawbacks or a lack of data, but its uncertainty on how data needs to be communicated. In addition, there no certainty of who is the responsible agency or authority to fulfill five aspects of data communication. This is the final homework of IWRM implementation in managing river basin in Indonesia.


Introduction
The global human population and activities have been growing and putting additional pressure on water resources.It creates increasing attention on the management of utilization of shared water resource such as river [1].In the same time, more people dwell in river basin [2].River basin is governed by hydrological processes -areas from which rainfall flows into a river [3,4].As most of river basin is located across administrative boundaries, the performance of the water in the basin is determined by many water-related aspects/sectors [5,6] which is managed by different agencies within different authorities.For example, the condition of land use gives big impact on the condition of the hydrological system of a basin.In regards to water supply and demand, land use will affect the basin's ability to absorb water and also affect the amount of water usages [7,8].While, the land use conditions in a river basin are the accumulation of the policy results of many sectors managed by different agencies and authorities, such as housing, agriculture, economy, industry, tourism agencies.
Due to its interconnected nature, the performance of river basin management is one example of common governance responses where a problem and condition has been coped with via multiple interventions.As consequences, river basin governance needs be robust and adaptable within a wide range of pressures/changes and the growing interconnected actors and problem to maintain system performance [9,10].Governance is about the arrangement of policies across different actors and their perspectives and interests [11,12,13].Every policy is formulated to cope with problem and objectives to be targeted.It consists of a range of policy instruments [11,12].The policy and its instruments applied are depend on the interest and perspective of decision makers.In river basin governance, the capacities of a policy to synergize with other policies is crucial to create effective management [14,15].Conflicts over sharing water resource in river basin are the outputs of non-synergizes or non-integrated policies.Although there are many levels of policy integration [16], the most effective policy integration in shared natural resources occurs when data and information are shared [17].
Including Indonesia, many countries have proclaimed integrated water resource management (IWRM) as their approaches in basin management.IWRM, which has been advocated as best concept for sustainable river basin management, is a concept that aims to ensure that all functions and activities in the river basin synergize and strengthen each other [18,19].In this concept, all functions and activities will be taken into 1310 (2024) 012007 IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1310/1/012007 2 account for their impact on other regions or sectors.IWRM also requires integrated data and information system [20,21].According to the Indonesian Law No 17 Year 2019, the data and information system in water management must provide and consider, not only technical and physical data related to water but also the social, economic conditions of the water resource area to support the decision-making process.As Bengawan Solo River Basin is located across two provinces (Central and East Java Province) and 20 regencies/municipalities within them, those data do not come from single authority or agency but from various agencies from municipality, province to national level governments based on their assigned responsibility.Thus, big various and comprehensive data related to water are required to be accessible to every agency and authority across Bengawan Solo River Basin.This paper reviews what is the condition of water related data in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management -the type of water related data, the data frequencies, and the data sharing mechanism.The overall aim is to examine data communication among actors and supports the decision-making process in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management.

Methodology
Implementing IWRM in river basin requires data can be communicated among actors to promote their decision-making process.To trace how data communication occurred among actors in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management, three activities have been undertaken (Figure 1): 1) identifying the type of waterrelated data need be shared in sharing water resource from the literature; 2) identifying the availability of water-related data identified in the stage 1 in the existing data provided by government agencies; 3) conducting a series of focused group discussion (FGD) to elaborate the use of the available data to decision making process to understand its limitation to support decision-making process.To analyze how they data communication occurs, we reflected the FGD findings with five aspects data communication -sender (data providers), receiver (data users), message (the data), communication medium and protocol/SOP.In this research, FGD has been chosen as a method not only to identify the problems and failures but it can be a mean for social learning among participants [22,23].By using FGD scheme, several conditions can be met, that are recognition of interdependence, interaction among different participants, trust, respect of diversity, critical self-reflection, exchange of problem perceptions, and the development of potential solutions based on reciprocity and commitment among actors in Bengawan Solo River Baisn Management.As the actors in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management are coming from three different level of authorities, that are national, province, and municipality, the FGD participants represents those three levels of government agencies which their area of responsibilities correlated with the Bengawan Solo River basin performances.

Water-related Data in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management
Creating water balance in river basin management requires data and information of water resource availability, water demand and its distribution [6].In Bengawan Solo River Basin, those data come from various agencies from different level governments.In regard to the type of water-related data, it can be seen that the data provided can be categorized into three categories: (1) statistical data; (2) image data; (3) spatial and georeferenced data.However, most water-related data is presented in numeric/statistical and image form.Very few data are represented publicly as spatial georeferenced data (interactive).Thus, there is still gap between the data form is required and the existing data available publicly provided by agencies.
In practice, the type of the data will depend on the end goal of the data providers.As consequences, although those three level government agencies have already published their data and information publicly in their websites to fulfill as mandated by the law, it is still challenging for other agencies to extract the data and use in supporting their decision-making process.Even for comparable situation, every actor for their decision-making process has their own requirement of data [24].To make it sounds, the water-related data not only need to be accessible but it must accommodate different requirements from many actors.
According to the methodology, there are two-way of data collections.First, remote sensing data which covers vast areas using satellite imagery.Secondly, field data which collected on the ground both by using devices and manual data collection.In Bengawan Solo River Basin, most of the data uses the second method.For example, data regarding to rainfall and surface water are collected from the measurement points using the devices, while infrastructure and social, economic, demographic data are collected manually.The data are collected hierarchically from the lowest scale to be accumulated to understand the whole basin.Regardless of the methodology, any water-related data collection for river basin management must have standards for its quality, documentation and archiving process which are legitimated by all actors involved in river basin management [22].In the existing condition there is only few agreement featuring standards of data must be collected by responsible agencies.
In the same tone, there is no specific agreement among agencies about the time of collecting and sharing data among providers.In practice, the frequency of data collection and sharing are related with the type of data, its function and the capability of the data providers.It can be one-time data, periodic data, or continual data.However, there minimal frequency of the data collection and sharing for water-related data in river basin management [25].No agreement among water-related data providers in Bengawan Solo River Basin management which define the agreement of the frequency of data sharing, has made variations of data itself.For example, for water quality data, even though there is minimal standard of the data need to be provided in every measurement point, there is no agreement when and how many times water quality test need to be done among national government, provincial government and municipal government in monitoring Bengawan Solo River water quality.It creates problem to evaluate the water quality performance in the basin.
Sharing data mechanism in river basin management can be direct and indirect mechanism [22].It can be categorized as direct when it is happening under treaties or agreements among transboundary actors and provide a definite framework for sharing water-related data.While, indirect mechanism is when the data is taken from information provided websites or legal documents and formalized communication for requesting data [22].In the absence of agreement, sharing water-related data among agencies in Bengawan Solo River Basin rely on indirect mechanisms.In river basin management, which serve as boundary objects, the absence of data platform data sharing creates difficulties to bridge different viewpoint of the actors [26].
The summarization of water-related data according to its type, data frequencies and mechanism of data sharing provided by three different level of government can be seen in table 1.

Indication of failure in data communication in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management
Managing water in river basin management is not managing a resource but a resource system.Water related data in river basin is various, comprehensive and interconnected.Data cannot be provided by single agency.Sharing data among agencies has become a compulsory necessity and crucial for making sound decision of every agency managing different water-related fields.Agencies may focus their efforts to strengthen their data and make it open as mandated by the Law.However, the data will not give benefits if it cannot be communicated, extract and then used by others to manage their water-related field in Bengawan Solo River Basin.As a consequence, there is little possibility that decision of every agency toward water-related field is taken based on comprehensive consideration.Reflected on aspect of data communication [27], it found that the lack of data communication among government agencies ise because not all communication aspect can be fulfilled Bengawan Solo water-related data sharing.a. Sender and receiver aspects The reason why the communication does not occur among government agencies is because the agency as both sender and receiver does not know well each other.As a sender (the data provider) in providing the data, each of agency does not consider what data specifications are needed by others.They tend to set their rules in providing data based on their interest.In other hand, the government agencies as a receiver also does not familiar with the data sets provided by other agencies.Thus, although website has been initiated to facilitate open data, the available data is still not well systemized to be accessed and become a reference for other agencies so that its usefulness cannot be maximalized.b.Message (data) As a resource system, river basin management requires interconnected data regarding water condition in all river basin areas.It needs interactive data rather than static data.In the existing condition, most of the available data is static data such as texts and images.So, a fairly lengthy process is still needed to proceed this data again so that it can be analyzed to produce information in-decision making process.These difficulties made the data usually is skipped as consideration in in decision-making process.c.Communication Medium Working at the same hydrology system, three level of governments have quite similar data sets especially for hydrology, hydrogeology, hydrometeorology data and infrastructures.However, even though requiring quite same data, in the existing condition, there is no data interaction among them.Data are presented incrementally in their own platform even though it describes the same areas in river basin.It is caused because there is no communication medium (platform for data sharing) where their data can interact to each other.d.Protocols or standard operational procedures (SOP) In the existing condition, every government sets their own rules and policies regarding their data provision.To show the same data or conditions, the form of data and the way it is collected by each institution can be different according to their capabilities, main tasks and functions or interests/perspectives.Different capabilities between agencies in data collection, processing, and presenting, caused by limited funds and skilled staffs, made the quality of the data both in content and the time it is updated is different.As a result, there is a big chance be misaligned among data set, overlap and inadequate data which at the end will affect the quality of decision-making process.To be well communicated, all the data need to have the same standard in its quality and its frequency.SOP, which is very few in the existing conditions, is needed to specify the agreed data qualities and frequencies among agencies in Bengawan Solo River Basin management.

Conclusion and Recommendation
River basin is a hydrological system that cannot be separated by administrative boundaries (national, provinces, and municipalities).As a system, the condition of each part of the system will have a systemic impact on other areas.As a shared resources, water-related data in river basin management presents a major challenge in synergizing data and information in supporting decision-making process.Recently, integration water resource management has increasingly focused on data sharing.The Indonesia the Indonesian Law No 17 Year 2019 mandates that all data and information system in water management must be provided and accessible to support decision-making process.As a result, every authority/agency has start to focus their effort to compile and sharing their data publicly through their website.However, it found that there is still problem and challenging to extract and use data and information.In Bengawan Solo River Basin, there is no communication among the existed data and information produced by various agencies.It is happened because the existing data does not fulfill the five aspects of communication, that are (1) the sender and the receiver should have same perspective of data; (2) data need to be set as interactive data for all users; (3) it has medium (data sharing platform data); and ( 4) it has standard operational procedure (SOP) to specify the agreed data qualities and frequencies among agencies.It points that the absence of data communication occurred because there is no definite data sharing framework define what data need to be shared and communicated among parties, data frequencies and the mechanism in sharing data legitimated by all agencies involved in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management.It reveals that data cannot be used maximally to support effective river basin management because it is trailing not because of technology drawback or a lack of data, but its uncertainty how it needs to be communicated.Acknowledging that there are three level governments responsible for water-related data in Bengawan Solo River Basin, the most effective integration only can be occurred when data and information are well communicated.It is stated in the law that there should be an agency who is responsible for the data integration.However, who is the responsible agency/authority including to set those five aspects of data communication is not clear enough.Meanwhile national, province and municipal government is not also equipped with the authority to influence data from other agencies/authorities which is not under their responsibilities.This is the final homework in the Integrated Water Resource Management implementation to manage river basin in Indonesia.Although the research is only focusing to one of river basin in Indonesia, it points out that the spirit of integration in policy is not enough in its implementation.It needs technical condition that made every actor voluntarily exchanges and cooperates in data provision.As it is context specific with social and political system, further researches are needed to elaborate the inhibiting and supporting conditions to create data communication aiming to IWRM.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Methodology Framework Identifying the type of water-related data in river basin management Identifying the availability data from the agencies/authorities FGD Participants x Representation of National Government: Bengawan Solo River Basin Authority x Representation of Provincial Government: PUSDATARU Central Java Province x Representation of Municipal Government: Sragen Municipality FGD Objectives x Identify the need of data required compared with the available data x Identify problem and challenge of sharing data across authorities and agencies x Understanding the limitation of current mechanism of sharing data Data Communication among Authoties/Agencies in Bengawan Solo River Basin

Table 1 .
Water-related data in Bengawan Solo River Basin Management