CITY OF MALOLOS—Here’s good news to public servants who are willing to give their best to improve the lives of their constituents.

Running A Bureaucracy, a groundbreaking guidebook for local government administrators, all public managers and elected officials, will be released on April 17 at the University of the Philippines’ National College of Public Administration and Governance (UP-Ncpag).

The author, Maria Gladys Cruz-Santa Rita, is considered to date as the country’s longest-serving provincial administrator.

Santa Rita served the province of Bulacan for 17 years, and saw it gain premier status as a leading public-service innovator and good-governance model of the country.

Alex Brillantes Jr., professor and dean of UP-Ncpag, is endorsing Running A Bureaucracy to public-administration practitioners and scholars.

“Good governance and new public management advocates, including the Ncpag, recognize its potential to be the definitive guidebook not only for local government administrators, but for all public managers and officials who want to make a difference for their country,” he said.

“This book is the first of its kind and the ultimate guide to the new paradigm of local government administration; one that reinvents the role of public managers in making good governance work for the bureaucracy,” explained the Provincial Administrators’ League of the Philippines president, Virgilio Esguerra.

The league has recently expressed its support for the book, touting it as the “must-read” for today’s new Filipino public manager and even for elected public officials on the look-out for new management techniques and approaches.

“It would not be wrong at all to partly attribute Bulacan’s prominence to the author’s own exemplary management of premier development programs that had elevated the provincial government of Bulacan to the halls of fame as a reinvented, citizen-responsive bureaucracy,” said Brillantes, adding that the book faithfully details how the country’s public managers, as well as public officials, could replicate the Bulacan experience and the author’s sterling public-service career.

Settlers get 300 housing units from Hanjin

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT—Amid the controversy over the construction by Hanjin Heavy Industries Corp. (HHIC-Phil) of an apartment complex, the South Korean investor silently turned over some 300 housing units to families affected by its shipyard-expansion program at the Redondo Peninsula here.

OPPOSING Malacañang’s call to the House of Representatives to review the baselines bill, a proadministration legislator dared his colleagues to “do what is right and put the Kalayaan Island Group inside the country’s baseline.”

A SENIOR House leader has joined the Philippine Association of Independent Power Producers (Pippa) in its demand to strip the National Power Corp. (Napocor) the right to procure coal and oil under the proposed measure to amend the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira).

THE Armed Forces chief of staff, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., is trying to strike a bargain with some of the 28 military officers accused of mutiny over still unknown reasons, a defense lawyer said on Thursday.

THE ongoing drive of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) to reduce the number of buses plying Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (Edsa) by going after colorum and out-of-line buses is doomed to fail, unless government agencies involved in the franchising, regulation and registration of the public-utility vehicles get their act together.

CITY OF MALOLOS—Here’s good news to public servants who are willing to give their best to improve the lives of their constituents.

ENVIRONMENT Secretary Lito Atienza is confident that the Investment Defense Force (IDF) that Malacañang has activated will address security concerns being raised by both local and foreign mining investors following recent attacks in some of the mining projects in the Philippines.

WITH an expected influx of about 12 million passengers this year, the Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa) has accepted a donation of 1,500 baggage trolleys and 12 “jumbo” carts to add to an existing 1,500, hoping that this would be enough to prevent the shortage of pushcarts during peak arrivals and departures.