Open Governance Plan: It’s Performance Time

Fourth of five parts

(Note: We are extending the three-part Open Governance article by two more installments to cover the performance management and information technology commitments in the draft Philippine Government Action Plan for open government.)
THE final sections of the Philippine Government Action Plan, submitted by President Benigno Aquino 3rd to the 46-nation (so far) Open Government Partnership cover strategies that could potentially impact the most on national development and public services: Escalate Accountability to Ethical and Performance Standards and Maximize Technology and Innovation.

As envisioned dual “ethicnology” thrust would upgrade and sharpen both the hardware, software and peopleware of governments, making its most crucial components of governance: human knowledge and action, and the information technology and management systems enhancing thinking, coordination and action in response to national and local challenges. Here are our comments on the Philippines’ draft commitments in performance management and IT for the years ahead.

Harmonizing Performance Measurement Systems: This initiative to formulate and promulgate uniform performance measurement systems at the organizational, financial and individual levels is long overdue. A task force is to be created by December to propose the measurement system for implementation starting April — a tight target, judging from this former Cabinet member’s experience in sweeping government reforms requiring input and acceptance by many agencies.

One way to avoid undue delay is to have phased implementation, first in national agencies, state firms, colleges and universities, then LGUs, and finally the Legislative and Judicial branches. While all affected agencies would be consulted, there has to be a mechanism for final decisions within strict timeframes. In this task force steering committee should be the Office of the President (OP), Civil Service Commission (CSC), Commission on Audit (COA), National Economic & Development Authority (NEDA), Department of Budget and Management (DBM), and the two chambers of Congress, and the Supreme Court.

Results-Oriented Budgeting in More Agencies: It is disturbing that the government aims to have just 10 agencies fully implementing DBM’s Organizational Performance Indicator Framework (OPIF) only at the end of next year! One hopes there are mechanisms already in place now to ensure that goals and programs in the Philippine Development Plan for 2011-2016 are somehow implemented by agencies and their divisions and personnel. We cannot have another year of delays in government initiatives, from needed infrastructure to law enforcement and disaster response.

Whoever is drawing up the list of priority agencies should make sure to include the ones in 2009 balanced scorecard strategic planning for compliance with the Millennium Challenge Corporation governance standards.

Already with strategic plans in place under that initiative are the Department of Finance and its revenue bureaus, the Education, Health, Public Works, Transport and Communications departments, and the Philippine National Police. And given their mega-budgets outside congressional review, top state bodies should also adopt OPIF ASAP: GSIS, SSS, Philhealth, PagCor, PCSO, PNOC, and Napocor.

Greater Compliance with Citizen’s Charters: The Civil Service Commission is ahead on this initiative, now implementing the report card survey to make citizen’s charters, public assistance desks, and anti-fixer programs more client-friendly and compliant with the Anti-Red Tape Act. The government should work closely with CSC as well as civil society organizations (CSOs) and agency clientele on its laudable goal of ensure that all national government entities have charters. In fact, much of that goal was accomplished in 2009, resulting in a drop in bribery solicitation in the bureaucracy, as reported by the annual Social Weather Stations Survey of Corporations in that year.

Internal Audit and Internal Control Manuals: Congress, CSOs and media should press the government to make good on its plan to issue an internal audit manual for state bodies before January. This should not be so hard since there were already similar manuals issued in past administrations or on the shelves of DBM, COA, UP and the Development Academy of the Philippines. More important, the government should bring forward to 2013 at the latest the deadline for all agencies to set up internal audit systems. Why should the system have to wait till the next president in 2016?

Accountability in Local Governance: The current 2016 proposed deadline for national agencies to implement even the most basic internal controls looks even more unimpressive next to the end-2012 target for 50 percent to 70 percent of local governments to obtain the seal of good housekeeping mark for good governance. In fact, the goal for LGUs is even more complex and demanding than just internal audit: “new standards that link performance in social development areas to the awarding of Seal of Good Housekeeping and Performance Challenge Fund grants.” If LGUs are supposed to do all that by the end of 2012, NGAs must have internal audit by 2013.

(The first three parts appeared on the past Friday, Monday and Wednesday. The last ands fifth part will come out on Monday.) –Ricardo Saludo, Manila Times

Ricardo Saludo, CSC chairman in 2008-09, heads the Center for Strategy, Enterprise & Intelligence, which publishes The CenSEI Report on global and national issues. For copies, email report@censeisolutions.com.