IT and transparency in government

It is not always that one gets to be happy with something that the government is doing. Last April 4, I was invited to attend a seminar on the Electronic Procurement Service (http://www.procurementservice.org) of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and I felt just that.

According to Estanislao Granados, director of the DBM’s Procurement Service, the EPS is an Internet-based procurement system launched by the DBM in November 2000 in order to generate lower costs and increase transparency in government. It is a service open to all agencies of government and is composed of the following:

• A public tender board where bid packages and related information are made available online,

• An electronic catalogue which lists goods and services commonly purchased by government agencies and their approved prices, and

• A supplier registry wherein all suppliers wishing to do business with government agencies need to register. (http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/egov/philippines_eproc.htm).

The EPS is supported by several executive orders. Executive Order No. 322 requires that all bid opportunities, notices and awards be advertised and posted in the EPS. It also requires that all suppliers who wish to do business with government agencies to register in the system.

In addition, the implementing rules and regulations of Executive Order No. 262 requires that "bid requirements should be published in two consecutive issues of two newspapers of general circulation and posted in the EPS."

In October 2001, President Arroyo issued Executive Order No. 40 which consolidates the procurement rules and procedures for all national government agencies and requires the use of the government electronic procurement system. Section 38 of the EO states, "All agencies are hereby mandated to fully use the EPS in accordance with the policies, rules, regulations and procedures of the Procurement Policy Board."

Transparency in government

What really are the advantages of the EPS? The system reduces the time spent in as well as the costs of procurement. In addition, transparency is greatly enhanced. Information on the government bid opportunities, the winning bidders, the reason for the award as well as the contract amount, are all accessible online. Moreover, suppliers are able to access these information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. On the other hand, government auditors are able to use the electronic catalogue to check on the propriety of the prices of common government purchases.

And what is so important about transparency in government, in this case, transparency in government procurement? Its importance lies in Article XI, Section 1 of the 1987 Constitution, which states, "Public office is a public trust. Public officers and employees must be accountable at all times to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives." For these public officers and employees to be accountable at all times, their actions must be observable, reviewable and transparent to the public. Former Education Secretary Raul Roco has a nice name for this – the "sunshine principle."

Electronic Commerce Act

It is also along the lines of the "sunshine principle" that the Electronic Commerce Act or Republic Act No. 8792 requires government agencies to be able to do business electronically. Section 27 of the Act states that "within two years from the date of effectivity of this Act, all departments, bureaus, offices and agencies of the government, as well as government owned and controlled corporations" shall, among others, "transact government business and/or perform governmental functions using electronic data messages or electronic documents."

Yet, according to Assistant Secretary Timmy Diaz de Rivera of the Presidential Management Staff during the EPS seminar which I mentioned earlier, only 20 percent of all government agencies were expected to be able to comply with the mandate of the Electronic Commerce Act. Our agency, the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission, for example, was only able to put up its own website last June, barely making the deadline set by the Act. (The site is accessible at http://ecommunity.ncc.gov.ph/pagc/.) Clearly, therefore, a lot needs to be done to achieve transparency in government, particularly through information technology.

Problem of corruption

The need for transparency is all the more pressing once we relate it to the problem of graft and corruption. According to surveys made by the Social Weather Stations (http://www.sws.org.ph), in the past decade and a half, corruption has been the second most common subject of public dissatisfaction with government. It came next only to rising inflation. In the surveys, the SWS found that:

• Most Filipinos consider the magnitude of corruption to be serious;

• Most people sense that 30 percent or more are wasted in the provision of textbooks, purchase of equipment, building of roads and collection of taxes, due to corruption;

• Most people believe that, among the major branches of government, the executive is the most notorious for corruption, next is the legislative, and then the judiciary; and that

• Enterprise managers are generally willing to pay one percent of their company’s net income to finance a credible anti-corruption program fund.

Of course, we all know that corruption nurtures itself in the lack of transparency in most government offices.

Presidential Anti-Graft Commission

With these stark realities, all of us are called on to assist the government in its fight against graft and corruption. There are several agencies of government involved in this fight and one of them is the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PAGC). It was created by President Arroyo through Executive Order No. 12 series of 2001, to succeed the Presidential Commission Against Graft and Corruption (PCAGC). Its main function is to investigate and hear administrative cases involving presidential appointees in the executive branch of government. (For more information, e-mail the commission at pagc@hiwire.ph or visit its website at the URL earlier indicated.)

By its nature, the commission shares the responsibility of fulfilling the promise that the President made in last year’s State of the Nation Address (SONA), that of reducing corruption in government. It reports regularly to the Office of the President in relation to its commitments in fulfilling the above-mentioned promise. These reports, as well as the reports of other government agencies on their own commitments in fulfilling the SONA promises of the President, may be accessed at http://www.gov.ph/sona/. Again, we find another attempt at using information technology in making the government more transparent and accountable to the people. May we not lose hope in all these efforts.

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(The author was a former research assistant of the Information Technology Law Program of the Institute of International Legal Studies of the University of the Philippines’ Law Center. He now works as an accountant of the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission. His e-mail address is gilbert.lumantao@mailcity.com.

The views contained in this article are his own and do not represent the position of the government agency he works for. The article is based on a lecture given to the Rotary Club of Sampaguita Grace Park led by its president Mina David Tanchi.)