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MAINILA, Philippines?Six government agencies may finally get the deal on a $500-million, five-year grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an independent US foreign aid agency created by Congress, a non-government organization Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) said in a news release.
The six government agencies?namely, the Department of Education (DepEd), Department of Health (DoH), Department of Transportation and Communication (DoTC), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), and Philippine National Police (PNP)?are undertaking the Performance Governance System (PGS), a local adaptation of the Balanced Scorecard applied to the public sector to track their performance against a set of goals.
These agencies will make their performance commitments public on March 25, 2010 at the Public Governance Forum jointly convened by the ISA, the National Competitiveness Council, and the Development Academy of the Philippines.
These six government agencies are ?making public their performance commitments for 2010 and telling everyone to judge their performance by these parameters. This is serious,? said Dr. Jesus Estanislao, ISA?s founding chairman and former finance chief during the Aquino administration.
The Public Governance Forum will highlight the national government?s commitment to pursue the PGS as part of its good governance (and anti-corruption) program. The six agencies will publicly post on their websites their governance scorecards and commit to make quarterly reports on the basis of these governance scorecards through their website.
In part through the PGS, the six government agencies have been introduced to the Millennium Challenge Corporation and gained for the country nearly $20.7 million in ?threshold program? to help reduce opportunities for corruption and improve revenue administration by strengthening the monitoring and investigative functions of the Ombudsman and Department of Finance. The national government is in the process of finalizing an agreement with the MCC expected to be completed by the end of March 2010.
Estanislao said six more agencies are slated to undertake the PGS process before June 2010. These are: the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Deparment of Budget and Management (DBM), Civil Service Commission, Development Academy of the Philippines, the Office of the President, and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).
The agencies? anti-corruption programs are being led by senior career undersecretaries so that the governance reforms will be pursued even with a change in leadership, Estanislao said.
