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UP physicists map pork releases from lawmakers to NGOs
By PATRICIA DENISE CHIU and KIM LUCES, GMA News
Pork barrel donors and recipients comprise networks that can be visualized, yielding patterns that can be investigated.
That's what motivated UP physics professor Giovanni Tapang who processed the data contained in the now-famous Commission on Audit special audit report (2007-09) to produce "network maps," which reveal the rich interconnections among lawmakers and the NGOs that received their coveted pork.
That's what motivated UP physics professor Giovanni Tapang who processed the data contained in the now-famous Commission on Audit special audit report (2007-09) to produce "network maps," which reveal the rich interconnections among lawmakers and the NGOs that received their coveted pork.
This graph features a network of legislators represented by nodes connected to other legislators if they provided funds to the same NGO. They are grouped accordong to five colors based on the frequency with which congressmen or senators made their PDAFs available to common NGOs.
Dr. Tapang said that he came up with the idea of graphing the connections of legislators and their favored NGOs as a means to quickly express data that would otherwise have been hard to glean from the COA’s data presented in tables.
"The data (in the COA report) is in several tables and annexes that listed the non-governmental organizations (NGO) to whom funding was given by a legislator. One cannot immediately see the relationships between the NGOs and between legislators by simply looking at the tables,” Tapang told GMA News Online in a phone interview. Tapang is connected to UP's National Institute of Physics.
"The NGOs grouped together, usually they get their same releases from the same group of people,” he explained.
Tapang and his students, masteral student Gabriel Dominik Sison, and fourth-year physics major Pamela Pasion, used algorithms to create an intricate web of connections and "communities" of legislators and NGOs that could be used by investigators of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam.
The team has made the network maps available online.
This graph shows the "communities" of NGOs that the lawmakers gave their pork barrel funds to.
Tapang found that certain legislators made their PDAFs available to the same set of NGOs. This pattern is shown by the five different colors in the graph.
The NGOs are also color coded.
“The NGO's grouped together, usually they get their releases from the same group of people,” Tapang told GMA News Online in a phone interview.
“The colors signify relationships of senators and congressmen who gave to the same NGO's. Pag magkakaparehong color, magkakapareho yung binibigyan nila,” Tapang explained.
“[Maiisip natin,] bakit sa same set sila nagbibigay?” Tapang said, adding that the visual tool might help in zooming in on particular NGO’s or lawmakers.
“The first network that we created is a network where a legislator – represented by a node – is connected to another legislator if the two of them provided funds to the same NGO," Tapang said in his explanatory note of the network.
"We [then] applied community detection algorithms to determine if there were groups of legislators that were likely to fund NGOs together," he continued.
“The legislators were colored based on what 'community' they fell into. This allows us to quickly visualize these communities.”
Tapang pointed out that, in their visualization, a particular lawmaker emerged to have connections to at least 40 of the named NGOs, a fact that might not be easily appreciated should one only be reading the COA report.
Enrile very generous to NGOs
The graph also shows the legislators who made their PDAFs available to the most NGOs.
Notice that the nodes or circles are of different sizes. The legislators representing the biggest circles gave money to the most NGOs.
“The big nodes there are the ones where there are many PDAF releases,” Tapang said.
Among the legislators that made their PDAFs available to many NGOs are Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, Rep. Arrel Olaño of the First District of Davao del Norte, and Rep. Adam Jala of the third district of Bohol.
Data showed that Enrile had connections to at least 49 NGOs, while Olaño had connections to at least 66. Jala had connections to at least 73.
However, the professor was quick to note that the network does not ascribe guilt to Olaño or anyone else.
“Di rin namin iniiply na may ginawa siyang masama, pero may binigyan siyang marami. Maybe these things should be a focus of the investigation,” he said.
The same goes with the NGOs. The NGOs with the biggest nodes “are the NGOs that have been receiving a lot from the legislators.”
The top three NGOs receiving PDAF funds from legislators are Kagandahan ng Kapaligiran Foundation, Inc., Kabuhayan at Kalusugan Alay sa Masa Foundation, Inc. (KKAMFI), and the Dr. Rodlofo A. Ignacio, Sr. Foundation, Inc. (DRAISFI).
Money trail not included
Noting that the COA report is a veritable minefield of data, Tapang said he and his group have plans that will visualize more aspects of the report, including a possible look into the money aspect, or how much money each lawmaker gave to particular NGO’s.
“Note that most networks do not yet contain information on the amounts,” Tapang said.
“Wala pa diyan yung pera. Pero even without the money, we already see the communities [that] emerge.”
A study on the money trail is underway.
“So we'll see how the money trail will affect the results but that's another set of figures na hindi pa namin tapos,” Tapang explained.
“For investigators, I think this will be a very useful visualization of the data,” he said. Tapang explained that the visual aspect of the network makes it easy to spot commonalities in NGO’s.
But this does not prove anything yet. That would be the role of the investigators.
“Ano ba talaga yung relationship ng mga NGOs na magkakasama? Pare-pareho ba sila ng direktor? We haven't checked that yet,” he said.
Meanwhile, studies on the PDAF reports will continue.
“We're waiting for further reports for 2009 up to the present para makita rin natin kung nag-continue rin ito. We're trying to see if the communities are the same per year and per congress,” he said.
“Because if we can show that these are the people who keep giving to the same set of NGOs..., then that's your historical view of the pork barrel issue.”– KDM/HS, GMA News
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