In fighting corruption, opening up public documents not enough, report says

In 2014, all of the country’s 1,675 Local Government Units (LGUs) received the Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) for opening up public documents via online posting.

However, this is not enough to ensure that the country is winning the war against corruption, the “Independent Reporting Mechanism: Philippines Progress Report 2013-2015” said.

The 70-page report was written by Malou Mangahas, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).

Mangahas said there were not enough mechanisms to verify the integrity and completeness of the posted documents on the official websites of the LGUs.

“In the absence of mechanisms for citizen validation or government reports on the assessment of the integrity, completeness, and responsiveness of the same documents to citizens, it is not clear how the commitment has produced significant results in terms of promoting public accountability or the delivery of basic services,” she wrote.

The report was presented in a recent forum organized by the PCIJ with the World Bank and Open Government Partnership (OGP).

OGP is an international initiative to secure commitments from governments to promote transparency and fight corruption. In Southeast Asia, only the Philippines and Indonesia are part of OGP.

Granting the public access to vital government documents is deemed as an important factor in fostering transparency and fighting corruption.

During the forum, Rogier Van Den Brink, lead economist of the World Bank, said now that government documents are out in the open, “it is now harder to be corrupt.”

Another speaker, Czarina Medina-Guce, Executive Director of the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines, noted the need to strengthen the ICT capacities of local governments to help them comply with the  requirement to open up public documents via online posting.

According to a United Nations report, only 37 percent of residents in the Philippines, dubbed as the social networking capital of the world, had Internet access as of 2013. This is below the world average of 37.9 for that year.

Guce, citing how the strength of a nation was only as good as the strength of its smallest unit of government, said there was a need to support LGUs with an overarching ICT program.

May 2016 polls

One of the objectives of the forum was to assess the commitments of the country’s future leaders in continuing efforts at transparency, considering that there will be a change in political leadership after the May 2016 polls.

The presidential candidates were provided an advance copy of the IRM report and were asked to comment on the findings.

However, only the camp of Sen. Grace Poe managed to prepare a response to the IRM report.

Two other political candidates represented in the forum – former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte – apologized and instead presented their plans and platforms, which both included commitments to push for the passage of the law on Freedom of Information (FOI).

Poe is a sponsor of the FOI bill, seen as a key piece of legislation that would foster greater transparency in government. The bill has not yet been passed until now.

During the forum, Atty. Nepomuceno Malaluan, lead convenor of the Right to Know Right Now Coalition, said the FOI Act would be the best anchor to achieve the primary aims of OGP and fight corruption.

Bonuses and perks

Meanwhile, when it comes to transparency in government plans and budgets, “97 percent of national government agencies met reporting requirements, falling just shy of the 100 percent target.”

“High compliance stems from the seal being tied to agency bonuses. Government reports do not offer baseline and absolute numbers of compliance, making it difficult to determine if compliance has improved over time,” Mangahas wrote.

Mangahas noted that legislation was needed such that compliance need not be tied to bonuses and financial perks.

Transparency in plans and budgets was only one of nine government objectives when it comes to OGP. The eight other objectives include:

• supporting legislation on access to information and whistleblower protection;
• engaging civil society in public audit;
• enhancing performance benchmarks for local governance;
• enhancing government procurement system (Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System or PhilGEPS);
• strengthening grassroots participation in local planning and budgeting;
• providing government data in single portal and open format;
• initiate fiscal transparency in extractive industries (oil, gas, mining), and improve the ease of doing business.

On the ease of doing business (EODB) in the Philippines, the agency responsible for executing this from 2012 to 2016 was the National Competitive Council.

When the project started, the Philippines was in the bottom-third in the global Doing Business Report. There has been some improvement as the Philippines ranked 138 (out of 189) in 2013; 108 in 2014, and 95 in 2015.

Moving forward

Mangahas' five main recommendations in her report include:

• urging the Senate and House of Representatives to pass legislation to institutionalize commitment to OGP;
• involving more key bureaucratic stakeholders, beyond the current OGP Secretariat;
• organizing a regular secretariat for the Philippine OGP Steering Committee;
• including Congress, not just the Executive Branch of government, as a major stakeholder in pushing legislation for formal and institutionalized implementation of OGP commitments across different political administrations, meaning that commitments will not change when there is a change in political leadership, and
• reviewing the Philippines’ performance against the “Eligibility Criteria” of the OGP, especially when it comes to guaranteeing the citizens’ right to information.

Meanwhile, Undersecretary Bon Moya, Chief Information Officer of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and a member of Open Data Task Force-Philippines, said he did not want to be in Mangahas’ position.

He joked that Mangahas’ peers in the media think that “she’s selling out to government” while those in government think “she’s too harsh” in her assessment of government attempts at transparency.

Moya noted that “open data” or data that can be used and redistributed freely are indeed crucial in fostering transparency in government.

However, Moya said an open government is not enough because what the country needs is an “open society” meaning that people should also have access to vital information held by private institutions. — RSJ, GMA News