The chief of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) on Wednesday said agencies under the Office of the President are the immediate candidates for abolition under the government’s rightsizing program.
In a news briefing, Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno said the President’s arm agencies will be the first to undergo rightsizing once House Bill (HB) 5707 is passed into law. “There are many offices under the Office of the President that are candidate for rightsizing,” Diokno added.
HB 5707, or the Rightsizing the National Government Act, intends to abolish executive offices whose functions are deemed to be either redundant or antiquated. It also provides for the optional adoption of the rightsizing program by the Legislature, the Judiciary, the Constitutional Commissions, the Office of the Ombudsman and local government units.
Voting 230-6, the House of Representatives approved HB 5707 on Wednesday. The bill covers all agencies of the Executive branch, including departments, bureaus, offices, commissions, boards, councils and all other entities attached to or under their administrative supervisions and government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs) not covered by Republic Act 10149, or the GOCC Governance Act of 2011.
In his 2017 budget message, President Duterte said the national government has 186 departments, agencies and other offices, from just 176 in 2000.
He said the government work force currently stands at 1.5 million positions compared to just 1.1 million in 2000.
House Committee on Appropriations Chairman Rep. Karlo Alexei B. Nograles of the First District of Davao City, a principal author of the bill, said the bill aims to improve the quality and efficiency of government service delivery by minimizing duplication and improving performance through the rationalization of service delivery and support systems and organization structure and staffing.
Under the bill, the President of the Philippines is granted the authority in the rightsizing of the operations of the Executive branch to pursue functional shifts/modifications; to undertake organizational actions; to undertake other functional/organizational actions as necessary, consistent with the policies, principles, frameworks and standards of the Act; to develop and provide safety nets, including their implementation strategies, for employees of departments/agencies who may be affected by the government’s rightsizing efforts; and to formulate an organizational development program to strengthen the institutional capacity of the agencies and improve productivity of employees.
It provides for the creation of the Committee on Rightsizing the Executive Branch to oversee the implementation of the Act.
Diokno said a number of agencies and task forces under the Office of the President can be dissolved without affecting executive operations. “There are many agencies that we have identified that are duplicative in nature, task forces created over the last 30 years, and [rightsizing] gives us an opportunity to once and for all clean up the government,” Diokno added.
Diokno, however, preferred not to name executive offices that are up for rightsizing because their personnel might get “alarmed and distressed” by the thought of abolition. But if there is one agency the budget chief is itching to dissolve, it is the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), which he branded as “irrelevant” due to “functions that are no longer useful”.
The PCGG was created by late-President Corazon C. Aquino through Executive Order 1, Series of 1986. Under the supervision of the Department of Justice, the PCGG is mandated to recover the ill-gotten wealth accumulated by the Marcos family and its close associates during the administration of late-President Ferdinand E. Marcos.
Diokno said rightsizing can also be done through fusion or splitting of affected agencies, not just through abolition. He cited as example the Department of the Interior and Local Government, which he said can be cracked into two, local government and homeland defense—similar to the framework of the United States government.
The departments of Public Works and Highways, and Transportation can be merged into one, Diokno said, since they both roll out public infrastructure. The budget chief said “there are a lot of possibilities” to streamline government-service delivery, support systems, organization structure and staffing once the government’s rightsizing program is enacted into law.
Duterte, in his State of the Nation Address on Monday, told Congress to expedite the passage of HB 5707. “We’ll rightsize the national government. Let us trim the excess fat and add more muscle through the expeditious passage of the Act Rightsizing the National Government to Improve Public Service Institute. I, therefore, urge Congress to pass this at the soonest,” Duterte said.
“I am reiterating my directive to all government agencies [with] front-line services to our people, from womb to tomb, to further streamline their respective services to make these truly efficient and people-friendly. We want to ensure that our people receive the quality services that they surely deserve minus the delays by the bureaucratic red tape. I expect speedy reforms along this line,” Duterte added.
1 comment
Bravo! Kudos to the Legislature for this long over due law. We do give credit when it is due.
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Uh huh!
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