In his second State of the Nation Address (Sona), President Duterte urged Congress to pass a “rightsizing bill” to cut government bureaucracy “soonest”. In his Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Message, the President expressed concern over the size of the bureaucracy. Specifically, he noted that, although the expansion of the bureaucracy is a response to the growing demand of public services, “there is still fat in government that we must trim.”
Heeding the call of the President, the House of Representatives, two days after the Sona, passed on third and final reading House Bill (HB) 5707, “An Act Rightsizing the National Government To Improve Public Delivery of Services”. The principal author of the bill, Rep. Karlo Alexi Nograles of Davao City, said the measure will whip up a “lean and mean bureaucracy”. The Senate, earlier on March 15, under the committee chaired by Sen. Loren B. Legarda, submitted consolidated Senate Bill (SB) 1395, known as “Rightsizing the National Government Act”. In her sponsorship report, Legarda said, “From 176 agencies in 2000, there are now 186 agencies in the national government. Moreover, the national government work force currently stands at 1.6 million, compared to 1.1 million positions in 2000. The increase in the number of government agencies, without doubt, has a significant impact on our budget. For 2017, 29.57 percent (or P990.5 billion) of our budget of P3.35 trillion is allocated for Personnel Services (PS), an increase from 2016’s 27.05 percent (P812 billion) and 2015’s 28.62 percent (P746 billion). Aside from these budgetary implications, a big bureaucracy has a negative impact on government performance and efficiency. For example, the overlapping jurisdictions and redundant functions of several agencies result in confusing regulatory rules, duplicating requirements, red tape and inefficient delivery of public goods and services.”
Both HB 5707 and SB 1395 cover the Executive branch, including departments, bureaus, offices, commissions, boards, councils and all other entities attached to or under their administrative supervision; and government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) not covered by GOCC Governance Act of 2011. The Legislature, Judiciary, Constitutional Commissions, Office of the Ombudsman and local government units may, likewise, rightsize their respective offices, consistent with the guidelines provided for under both bills. The bills, likewise, provide for the creation of a committee on rightsizing the Executive branch, chaired by the Executive Secretary, cochaired by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), with the secretary of socioeconomic planning, chairman of the Civil Service Commission and head of the Presidential Management Staff as members.
Generally, the organizational actions to be followed are:
- Regularize ad hoc offices whose functions are vital and significant, thus must be continually undertaken by the government;
- Merge or consolidate agencies whose functions are necessarily overlapping or duplicating and can be undertaken by a single entity; or clients are similar or related to rationalize the use of government resources;
- Split agencies with multifarious functions which are deemed distinct and equally serve important aspects of governance;
- Transfer offices to other agencies wherein their functions are more aligned; and
- Abolish agencies: (i) which functions are already redundant or no longer relevant or necessary, or better undertaken by another entity; (ii) which are no longer achieving the objectives and purposes for which these were originally created; (iii) which are not cost-effective since these do not generate the desired levels of outputs and outcomes vis-à-vis the resource inputs; and/or (iv) which have already become nonoperational, dormant and/or outlived their purposes (HB 5707, Section 4).
Although approved by a majority of 230 representatives, six militant Party-list lawmakers rejected the bill as “an affront to the security of tenure of the public-sector workers in the guise of efficiency”. The DBM admitted “16 percent of the 1.6 million government positions, or 255,295 state workers, would be affected in the first year alone”.
Both bills, however, provide that government workers affected may avail themselves of retirement benefits, separation incentives, refund of Pag-Ibig contributions and commutation of unused vacation and sick leave credits.
I fully support the rationale for the rightsizing program of the President—which should start with the Office of the President itself, where a number of agencies, clusters, ad hoc committees and task forces can be dissolved without affecting quality and efficiency in the delivery of services. GOCC, which give themselves hefty bonuses, should probably be dismantled and its functions devolved to the private sector.
A big step in drastically removing “fat” from the Legislative branch would be to revert to a unicameral legislature, which would mean abolishing the Senate, which has no geographical constituency anyway. A bicameral legislature, which we currently have, is not only a waste of taxpayers money, it is also not efficient as both Houses still have to reconcile their separate versions of their bills before they come out with a consolidated version for submission to the President to sign into law.
On the part of the Judicial Branch, rightsizing should not be “downsizing“ but “upsizing”: create more courts, appoint more judges and prosecutors, public defenders and court personnel. This will ensure the more efficient administration of Justice, hopefully.
Indeed, rightsizing is a laudable move. But if corruption is not solved, what it would only mean is that there are fewer government agencies to corrupt.
We need not only trim the “fat”, but also to eliminate the “pork” at all branches of government. Only then can we be a healthy nation.
1 comment
Long overdue na tong rightsizing bill, approve naman sa nakararami yung incentives proposal ng DBM, kung kay senator Sotto maliit lang offer ng DBM sa amin na hindi naman masyadong nakakaluwag sa buhay marangya na yun. Senator ilagay mo na lang sarili mo sa katayuan namin. Salamat and GOD BLESS.