The idea of forming a National Legal Documentation and Information Network (JDIHN) has historically been closely associated with the development of national law in an effort to realize the rule of law. It is said that because the embryo of the formation of the JDIHN is one of the recommendations of the national law development activities, namely the 1974 National Law Seminar III in Surabaya. The law seminar was organized by the National Law Development Agency in an effort to dissect all elements of legal development in order to identify problems and find solutions to solutions.
When dissecting legal documentation, seminar participants found that legal documentation support for national legal development is still very weak. Legal documentation has not been able to provide legal documents and information quickly and precisely when needed. Legal documentation has not been able to provide effective access to legal information, so legal documents / information are difficult to find and recover when needed to support the implementation of legal development activities, such as: legal research, legal planning, preparation of academic texts, drafting of laws and regulations, formation of leadership policies and others.
Based on the observations of participants in the National Law Seminar III in 1974, the factors causing the weak support for legal documentation include:
Potential legal documents, are widely distributed in government agencies at central to regional areas with very large archipelago areas;
Not all of these legal documents are well managed in a system; 3. Existing management personnel are very lacking;
Attention to the existence of legal documentation and libraries is still lacking.
The seminar participants argued that the most effective way to overcome this weakness of legal documentation is to form cooperation between the legal document management units themselves in a legal documentation and information network.
Based on these thoughts the seminar recommended:
There is a need for a national policy to begin setting up a network system for legal documentation and information and for its immediate functioning. In the initial stage, two things need to be done: facilitate the search and rediscovery of statutory regulations, jurisprudence, and other materials. In order to quickly utilize all the information available, the Legal Documentation and Information Network System needs to be developed and developed.
Determined the Center and Network Members and provide the means necessary to start functioning.
While waiting for the issuance of the said national policy, BPHN (National Law Development Agency) as the duty bearer of national law development, immediately held a series of workshops and succeeded in preparing the network infrastructure so that it could be operational.
The workshops were Workshop on: "Legal Documentation and Information Network" in Jakarta (1975); Workshop on "Regulatory Rediscovery System" in Malang (1977); Workshop on “Legislative Dissemination System” in Pontianak (1977); Workshop on "Organization and Communication of Legal Documentation and Information Network Systems" in Jakarta (1978),
The 1978 workshop agreed to appoint BPHN as the Network Center and was assigned the task of organizing training for staff development, a place for consultation, research and development of network systems, as well as the activity coordinator for network units for network development. In order to carry out these tasks in 1988 BPHN as the JDIH Center issued a legal document management guideline called "Manual for Legal Documentation and Information Network Unit" which consists of IV modules, namely:
Module I: Guidelines for the Work Procedure of the Legal Documentation and Information Network Center.
Module II: Guidelines for Material Collection (Pre-cataloging Activities).
Module III: Sub-Module Processing Guidelines IIIA: Technical Guidelines for Cataloging Library and Post-catalog Materials (based on UDC); Sub-Module IIIB: Technical Guidelines for Cataloging Laws and Regulations; Sub-Module IIIC: Technical Guidelines for Cataloging Library and Post-cataloging Materials (based on DDC).
Module IV: Information Guidance Guidelines;
Module V: Legal Documentation and Information Network Unit Work Facilities
From 1978 - 1999, BPHN carried out the guidance and development of the JDIH based solely on this agreement. Many coaching and development efforts have been made, but information retrieval has not been able to be carried out quickly, precisely, and the use of information has not been well organized.
During the New Order government the recommendation to form a JDIHN received little attention. The Legal Documentation and Information Network is mentioned in the 1993 GBHN in the field of legal development in the facilities and infrastructure sector as a means of supporting legal development. But in the era of the government