Marcos signs law optimizing government operations

President Ferdinand ''Bongbong'' Marcos Jr. signed into law a measure seeking to optimize the national government to ensure efficient delivery of public services.

Republic Act 12231 or the Government Optimization Act was signed by the President on August 4.

Under the new law, optimization is defined as the process of analyzing and designing the appropriate roles, mandates, structures, functions, sizes, systems, and processes of government agencies to ensure effective, responsive, and efficient service delivery. 

The law aims to minimize, if not eliminate, redundancies, overlaps, and duplications in its operations and simplify its rules and regulations, systems and processes, while protecting the welfare of civil servants and other government workers.

It shall cover all agencies of the Executive Branch, including departments, bureaus, offices, commissions, boards, councils, and all other entities attached to or under their administrative supervision, and government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs) not covered by Republic Act 10149 or the GOCC Governance Act of 2011.

Teachers and teaching-related jobs in elementary, secondary, technical or vocational schools, state universities and colleges, and non-chartered tertiary schools are not covered by the law, nor are uniformed personnel of the Department of National Defense, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the Department of Justice.

Employees in excluded positions must meet the qualifications and be carrying out their duties, the law said.

The Congress, judiciary, constitutional commissions, and the Office of the Ombudsman, may optimize their respective offices, it added.

A whole-of-nation approach shall be adopted to ensure seamless operations of agencies within and across sectors to better anticipate and be more responsive to public needs.

Further, government operations shall be simplified so that the agencies can focus on the performance of their core functions and the implementation of programs and projects that will lead to the attainment of the desired sectoral and national goals and outcomes.

It also said that government systems and processes shall be streamlined and modernized to facilitate the delivery and upgrade the quality of frontline services, improve policy formulation, planning, and performance evaluation, and raise the overall productivity of the public sector. 

Moreover, digitalization and e-governance shall be utilized as a means to efficiently optimize government roles and provide prompt and effective services to the people. 

Under the new law, the Committee on Optimizing the Executive Branch will also be created to oversee the implementation of the Government Optimization Program (GOP).

The COEB shall be chaired by the Executive Secretary.

The Department of Budget and Management shall commission an independent impact assessment of the GOP, which will be conducted three years after its completion, to determine the effects and gains of its implementation. —VBL, GMA Integrated News