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Representatives from nominated local government programs were publicly competing to win the 2009 Galing Pook Awards when the presenter from Marikina was asked how he could be sure his authority’s process for granting business licenses and certificates was not tainted by bribery. The presenter looked visibly hurt. “Hindi po namin gawain ‘yan,” (We do not do such thing.) he answered.¹

While a water dealer in Marikina or restaurant owner in Naga City with regular dealings with their local authorities for permits might have understood and sympathized with the shocked official, for many other people around the country, dealing with local governments can be a murky business.

News on bribery, rent seeking and shady deals is commonplace and charges of inefficiency and corruption stick like mud. It is a fact of life that media would prefer to cover the outstandingly bad than the outstandingly good. This helps promote the sense that good governance in the Philippines appears to be the exception rather than the norm.

Yet good governance is what everyone wants. Even a crook wants to be treated fairly. Nobody in their right mind would prefer stealing and lying over good governance. But do we have it here? The answer from Galing Pook Foundation is a resounding “yes”. For sixteen years now, we have been searching, screening, selecting, awarding and promoting 10 outstanding local government units yearly for their overall excellence and innovation.

There is no lack of fine examples at the local level -- only a lack of people to document and promote them. So this is a good time to highlight some successes given the seeming many controversies rocking and wrecking the national leadership.

Transparency and Accountabilty Made Easy in Malaybalay City (Galing Pook 2009)

Wary of the implications of data obtaining from uncoordinated surveys conducted by its different departments, the city government of Malaybalay developed the Malaybalay Integrated Survey System (MISS), a Galing Pook awarded program in 2009. It obtains and consolidates data from the barangay level. Renie Bingat, head of Malaybalay City’s Geographic Information System (GIS) Office, recalls that MISS was originally set up for efficiency in data gathering and to avoid inconsistency on information generated.

Speaking before a forum on Women and Development, Mayor Florencio Flores admitted that prior to MISS, their city was data‐rich but information‐poor. So they devised means to make sure that raw data is processed into useful information. Mayor Flores said, “With MISS, we intend to understand the real context of our constituents so that (our) programs are… responsive, transparent and effective. The end goal is to be able to address…inequities especially (among) children and women."²

Barangay health workers (BHWs) and midwives -420 strong and mostly women- were trained and commissioned to gather relevant socio-economic data from residents of the city’s 46 barangays. The data generated is processed, uploaded and linked to GIS-facilitated report. The tool is ideal for ready retrieval of relevant information for planning and decision-making purposes.

MISS is a case of setting development goals and interventions that does not originate simply from those who were sat around the planning table. It is an effective means that provide the clear basis for determining the baselines on key development areas, the development priorities, and setting of concrete targets. More importantly, MISS provides both the incumbent leadership and the constituency a checklist on promises kept and pledges unmet later on.

For Kapitana Yorita Cajardo of Barangay Can-ayan, MISS is a lot more comprehensible and even fancier. While she would likely only browse over boring data, MISS gets her full attention to the visual information she can relate with. It’s far easier for Kapitana Cajardo, for instance, to connect a cluster of houses in a map lacking sanitary toilet facilities and access to safe potable water with high incidences of diarrhea. And she gets to appreciate better why certain programs have to be addressed first and how are they going to do it. Her barangay provides additional support to the BHWs who conduct the data gathering and uploading.

The MISS data processing program was developed locally to fit the requirements of the different departments of the city government. Local people are trained to carry out the data processing themselves. Validations are then conducted in the respective communities before its actual use for planning purposes.

Information is also disaggregated which is important in evolving programs and allocating Local Government Unit (LGU) budgets that are responsive to the needs of specific client such as women farmers, children, mothers of child bearing age. Having a fairly good picture of their situation and being able to determine their development interventions and targets, Mayor Flores asserts: “MISS… is Malaybalay’s… scorecard in terms of its programs for its constituents…."³

The Malaybalay case is effectively transparency and accountability-made-easy for the duty bearers and stakeholders right from the start of the whole program cycle. Through MISS, the local government pursues development interventions backed by proof that can easily be presented and understood. The system requires the involvement of the community in data gathering, processing, validation and analysis. Minds meet in the identification of interventions to address issues and challenges and in setting the development goals and targets that they can go back to and check against their actual accomplishments.

Measuring Performance in San Fernando City, Pampanga (Galing Pook 2008)

San Fernando City established a performance measurement management system used in business to improve governance. The 2008 Galing Pook awarded program was called the Public Governance System (PGS), adopted from the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) developed at the Harvard Business School. The city government makes use of the system to keep track of progress, ensure cooperation and monitor performance, and improve governance together with its key development partners. The Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) introduced the BSC to raise the standards of public governance with maximum citizen’s participation.

PGS guides and coordinates San Fernando City’s various tasks to achieve its common vision of transforming the city into a business center and the Gateway to Northern Philippines. They envisage and plan their city as being the Regional Center of Central Luzon and Champion of Good Urban Governance in 2015, a Global Gateway by 2020, and a Habitat for Human Excellence by 2030. Dreaming is free, so it says, and San Fernando City certainly does dream full-size. But they also ensured that the clear and measurable incremental steps to achieve the dream are laid down.

In the words of Mayor Oscar Rodriguez, “Under the PGS, our kind of governance is a partnership and a synergistic relationship between the local government and the people. Through PGS, the government and the people are one in moving forward to the realization of the common vision for the City of San Fernando”⁴

With PGS, responsibilities are shared. The city mayor down to every department personnel each has clear set of tasks and a scorecard to measure accomplishments. Apart from the mayor and city departments, the major sectors of the city – youth, academe, civic and professional organizations, business and media – have also their scorecards with their respective service pledges that they revisit on a regular basis to assess progress.

By bringing in the major sectors of the city, governance becomes a common responsibility of all, with officials and citizens sharing in the task of raising governance standards that yield public benefits for the common good. Among the areas measured in the scorecards are efficient social services delivery, order and security, business friendliness, environmental protection and rehabilitation, and quality of local infrastructure.

The whole PGS process harnesses the human and material resources and dynamism of the entire community to achieve long-term goals. It puts premium on meaningful and concrete partnership between the local government and its constituents channelling contributions from individuals and institutions in a sustained and systemic way for the mutual benefit of each organization and the community as a whole. Measurable indicators for the LGU and its partner individuals and institutions are straightforward, laid down and systematically linked to build on each other.

City Mayor Oscar Rodriguez enforced the PGS after a conference in August 2005 having been nominated by other mayors whose LGUs also implement the system. After the conference, four city government representatives were chosen to constitute a Technical Working Group and subsequently trained. By the end of 2005, a multi-sector workshop was conducted to forge the city roadmap containing the city’s vision and core values that they concurred on. The vision and core values are translated into key steps, policy targets and result indicators. Then finally, each LGU department and partner institutions put in clear language their respective service pledges.

Every two months, progress is monitored by the Office of Strategy Management that was put in place to undertake scorecard management, organizational alignment, strategy reviews, strategy planning, strategy communication, initiative management, planning and budgeting, workforce alignment and best practices sharing. The mayors and administrators from other LGUs implementing PGS perform an audit on the progress of San Fernando City using the latter’s scorecards.

Picking itself from the disaster wrought by the Pinatubo eruption in 1991, the city of San Fernando got back on its feet faster when it initiated PGS. It has strengthened the coordination between the executive and legislative departments through an executive order creating the Local Executive-Legislative Development Advisory Coordinating Council. The council formulated the city’s Executive-Legislative Agenda aligned to the city roadmap.

The city then re-organized the bureaucracy along the PGS mandate mustering the local government’s and the entire city’s human and physical resources. Streamlining the local government workforce, the number of personnel was reduced from 1,297 to 1,054 saving the city government PhP 20.5 million (USD 445,652) annually. The quality of administrative procedures at the City Assessor and Local Civil Registrar on the other hand has led to the granting of ISO certifications to both offices.

Lending credence to its policy of transparency, the Citizen’s Charter expedited public transactions and made them more transparent following the Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007. San Fernando City was the first city government in Central Luzon to comply with the Act according to the Civil Service Commission. Furthermore, the Public Affairs and Media Production Unit-Management Information System was set up. The office ensures that information on government programs, projects and financial transactions are accessible to the public through the print and broadcast media and the internet.

San Fernando City started to attract new investments. Business permit that takes two weeks to process before is now obtainable in two hours minimum or a maximum of 2 days under the city’s business one-stop-shop. Small and medium sized businesses increased from 5,832 in 2005 to 6,886 in 2008. Livelihood assistance was provided through credible organizations with track records in project management.

With the revised assessments of real properties, tax revenues have increased the city’s local income at PhP 385 million (USD 8 million) in 2009 from PhP 276 million (USD 6 million) in 2008. The 39 percent increase in annual local income pales the 9 per cent average increase from 2005 to 2007. Subsequently, the Special Education Fund that was only PhP 28 million (USD 608,700) in 2004 amounted to PhP 78 million in 2008 (USD 1.7 million) --an increase of 178 per cent. The Internal Revenue Allotment dependency of the city has also decreased from 52.85 percent in 2007 to 49 per cent in 2008.

Marikina City’s centralized warehousing of government supplies and materials reduced corruption and wastage and helped the multi-awarded city to save up millions of pesos. Courtesy of Galing Pook Foundation

With more public management credibility and financial wherewithal, strategic public investments followed. New school buildings are built from PhP 135 million (USD 6.9 million) investments targeted to benefit 126,000 children over ten years. The Sagip-Ilog Program that rehabilitates and protects the city waterways amicably relocated over 5,500 families who were awarded decent houses in a resettlement site. Joint ventures were entered into to construct quality standard slaughterhouse facility and the central transport terminal without direct financial outlay from the city government.

Mayor Rodriguez admitted that barangay governance is one area that they have yet to improve. Recognizing that the politics of patronage perpetrated by the dominant politicians in Pampanga has wormed deep, bringing the barangays to adopt the PGS is an enormous challenge. Every effective way is therefore made to have the key players at the barangay level internalize the value of PGS. Barangay assemblies are organized and workshops are conducted to ensure that PGS, with the city roadmap and all it entails, are reflected in all Barangay Development Plan.

Bringing Down Costs and Eliminating Leakages in Marikina City (Galing Pook 2008)

Marikina City is among those local governments in the country that continue to churn out and sustain innovations in public management. The LGU was, in the early years of Galing Pook, a Hall of Fame awardee and currently a holder of the Galing Pook Award for continuing excellence. The recognized programs in the recent years for Marikina were initiated at the department level and fully supported by the chief executive. Such is the case for the city’s Centralized Warehousing Management System (CWMS), a Galing Pook awarded program for 2008.

To ensure better management and judicious utilization of supplies and materials, the General Services Office of Marikina introduced a system of consolidating the requirements, purchase, storage and distribution of materials and supplies of every department and affiliate institutions of the city. The system operationalizes prudence in the use of the city’s resources, improves the efficiency in the supply chain and property management and effectively brings down cost while eliminating leakages in retail transactions.

CWMS was conceptualized after the city administration thoroughly reviewed its old supplies management system. With over 45 departments including affiliate institutions, each having personnel who only take charge of bidding and procurement, the fragmented system is deemed wasteful and fraught with leakages. Personnel cost alone amounts to over PhP 9 million (USD 195,652) annually. Consolidated expenditures for equipment and storage rental for the operation could easily cost the city government another PhP 2 million (USD 43,478) yearly at minimum. On top of these, the city government needed a system that would help them better manage their entire material and supply requirements more efficiently.

“Usually, the supplier delivers (orders) direct to the site. What happens though is… (they could get lost)… Right? Or they’re brought home. So we developed a central warehousing system to put all the materials first in the warehouse before they are distributed… they deliver only the amounts that are needed…”⁵ says Mayor Marides Fernando.

The 900-square meter centralized city government warehouse was built to store the office and school supplies, construction and electrical materials, equipment, relief goods and contraptions for emergencies and disasters, lanterns and decorative materials for festivities. Even the voluminous records of the city have dedicated storage rooms in the central warehouse organized according to duration of keeping or disposal.

Warehouse management adopted the system used in a hardware business. Under the helm of the General Services Office, the central warehouse continuously stockpiles and replenishes materials and supplies based on usage trend. Bar coding is in place to facilitate inventory and punctual releases. For replenishments, bidding and bulk purchases are done wholesale and are therefore competitively priced.

Inventory data that facilitates physical monitoring is accessible using the installed city government’s wide area network. Online inventory provides reliable information for decision makers and deters pilferage and wastage at the warehouse and at the office or site where the items are sent. Right utilization of the items requested is enforced and excess materials for barangay construction projects, for example, are returned to the warehouse for future use.

Says Dolora Lagunda, division chief of Supply and Property Management: “All the materials used for Marikina that come in and out of the warehouse are my responsibility. Corresponding papers are needed to withdraw an item. We also issue gate pass before anybody comes out. We have an inspector who makes sure, say this construction steel, is actually brought to the site and whether the work has been completed.”

The CWMS is now run by only 34 personnel, reducing the labor costs to PhP 2.2 million (USD 47.826) per year. Bulk procurement and competitive bidding enabled the city to save millions. In 2007, for example, requirements for 414 work programs estimated to cost PhP 391 million (USD 8.5 million) amounted to only PhP 375 million (USD 8.1 million) when consolidated and bid in public, enabling the city to save almost half a million pesos. Even scraps such as cartons, metals, paint cans, sacks, non-serviceable furniture and other discarded items from the city offices have their common neat storage space for public bidding. They are immediately sold in bulk to direct buyers and the proceeds are ploughed back to the city treasury.

Talking about continuous improvement, Marikina City is one local government that keeps its administrative and service delivery systems relevant. They go beyond the usual routine procedures be they in waste management (Eco Savers, Galing Pook 2007 winner), health and sanitation (Clean Food and Water Laboratory, Galing Pook 2009) and such other programs. Creative juices are made to flow continuously by recognizing, rewarding and supporting innovations in every department. Practical, more effective and far beneficial strategies are promptly set in place to complement procedures that still work or altogether supplant systems that have seen better days.

Marikina’s CWMS replaced the old, fragmented, wasteful and inefficient materials and supplies management system, an area most fraught with fraud, but still largely practiced in most LGUs in the country. The city government has successfully addressed efficiency in decision-making and administration concerns while making itself transparent with the CWMS’s online inventory and credible bidding procedures. The dynamics within and around the 900-square meter state-of-the-art central warehouse is a verifiable testament to another local innovation contributing to the attainment of what Mayor Fernando says is “...our mission since we have been in office – to make government delightful to work with, and to deal with."⁶

Building good governance is even more important

Asked why after 24 years the EDSA bloodless revolution has not become part of Filipinos’ day-to-day lives, Philippine Daily Inquirer founder Eggie Apostol said EDSA is thought of as belonging to the past and has to do with toppling down an unjust government rather than putting up a just one.⁷

That is a shame –such a sense of mind needs to be reversed. Good governance happens and has the most potential to spread. But more people and institutions have to give their share to hasten the spreading of the good news in governance. It may not be in sensational manner but it works. Things change: Good things happen. Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project

(The authors are the executive director and the program officer of Galing Pook Foundation, respectively. Formed in 1998, Galing Pook is the leading institution in the Philippines that promotes innovation, sustainability, citizen empowerment and excellence in local governance.)

^[1] Panel Presentations, Galing Pook Awards 2009, Social Development Complex Conference Hall, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City, 7 October 2009

^[2] Policy Forum on Gender in Good Governance, EDSA Function Hall, Regalia Tower Suites, Quezon City, 12 December 2009

^[3] Policy Forum on Gender in Good Governance, EDSA Function Hall, Regalia Tower Suites, Quezon City, 12 December 2009

^[4] Mayor Oscar Rodriguez, City of San Fernando Foundation Day Anniversary Speech, 4 February 2010

^[5] Mayor Marides Fernando, Marikina City, Probe Team interview commissioned by Galing Pook Foundation, February 2010

^[6] Mayor Marides Fernando, Marikina City, Probe Team interview commissioned by Galing Pook Foundation, February 2010

^[7] Conrado De Quiros, There’s the Rub, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 25 February 2010)