Regulations on CD ROM

Regulations on CD ROM

In reference to your article on April 17, 2000, on English
versions of government regulations on CD-ROMs, I am glad to see
more companies providing this valuable service. Our firm, PT ERM
Indonesia (Environmental Resources Management), an environmental,
health and safety (EH&S) consulting firm, provide extensive
services that require a thorough knowledge of Indonesian
regulations.

We found the availability of many regulations, in any
language, to be extremely limited. Further, with the Indonesian
legal system, environmental laws passed at the national level can
be overruled by the provinces or even at the regency level. Thus,
even if one can find all relevant national laws, this does not
give the full picture when the issue of "are we compliant with
relevant laws" is discussed with our clients.

ERM Indonesia then embarked on a program to identify and
collect all EH&S laws and then translate all of them into
English. It is a difficult task and we have already invested more
than US$150,000 in this undertaking. We recently started to sell
the regulations in a customized CD-ROM format in order to help
offset some of our costs.

I am glad to see that the Center of Law Research Indonesia
(PHI) and PT Ganesha Aggies Jaya are also working on translating
Indonesian laws, as without these efforts many multinational
companies simply cannot determine what the laws of the country
are.

Hopefully, as Indonesia emerges from the "monetary crisis" the
government will be able to set up web sites where companies can
download regulations in a number of languages. In the meantime,
we just ask that the government agencies help improve access and
availability to the regulations to create a win-win situation --
for if the private sector cannot access the regulations, what is
the use of generating them?

DAVE ARCHIBALD

PT ERM Indonesia

Bogor, West Java