More firms offer English version of govt regulations in CDROMs
More firms offer English version of govt regulations in CDROMs
JAKARTA (JP): Finding references in English on the country's
regulations is becoming faster and easier with the services by
several local firms which provide official translations on
various regulations on CDROMs.
One of the few providers of electronic law references, the
Center of Law Research Indonesia (PHI), currently offers a
collection of regulations on eight subjects, including taxation,
the stock market, insurance, the environment, land use, civil law
and banking.
Another firm, PT Ganesha Aggies Jaya, is focusing only on
regulations concerning labor issues, including decrees released
by the Ministry of Manpower, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of
Mines and Energy, Ministry of Health and the police.
Managing editor of PHI, Patricia Soetjipto, said the idea of
providing collections of translated laws was simply to help
companies, particularly multinationals or those that deal mostly
with foreign clients, to save time and cut costs while finding
the regulations they need.
"Laws and regulations are public domain. But you know very
well that it is hard for the public to obtain these legal
documents from the related government offices," she told The
Jakarta Post over the weekend.
She said PHI, which started business in 1995, had collected
copies of legal documents ranging from laws and regulations
issued by presidents and ministers since the 1950s.
Ganesha's business development manager, Feri Agustian, said
his company had faced difficulties collecting the legal documents
for translation purposes.
"My company spent two years collecting all the regulations on
labor from related government offices before we could launch the
first edition of our product in 1998," he told the Post on
Friday.
He said the decision to produce translations of laws in the
form of CDROMs instead of books was aimed at helping users to
save time while looking for a particular law.
"CDROMs are much better than paper; they can store more data,
are easier to use thanks to embedded applications, they need only
small storage spaces and can easily be taken with you anywhere,"
he said.
He added that CDROMs were used in order to meet the demand
from big companies for computerized products, which they believed
could help them operate their businesses more efficiently.
The use of CDROMs as a medium for data helped protect the
copyrights of the companies that produced the products, Patricia
said.
She said that unlike books that could be reprinted easily, the
CDROMs could not be duplicated because the data contained on them
was encrypted.
Both PHI and Ganesha are marketing their products through
direct sales to multinational and local companies operating
mostly in the public accountancy, law and banking sectors.
The two firms offer their products in U.S. dollars, ranging
from US$300 to $5,700 for products issued by PHI and from $195 to
$495 for those produced by Ganesha.
PHI's marketing executive Erliza Murni said each of the CDROMs
contained a collection of regulations on a particular subject
issued by related government offices.
"The most wanted product is the collection of regulations on
taxation," she said, adding that they cost about $1,300 each.
Patricia said her company's CDROM products contained only
official translations which were worked on by a team of sworn
translators and lawyers.
Ganesha also used sworn translators, Feri said. However, the
translated regulations could not be used as a legal reference in
court sessions, he said.
"Translated regulations produced by private firms cannot be
used as a reference in court cases. For courtroom use, people
must refer to the original regulations issued by the concerned
government offices," he said. (cst)