According to news from the Philippines published yesterday, the struggle against red tape, closely linked to fighting corruption, is active though according to the Doing Business index, the country is still losing ground at 136/183, a region where it has been stuck since the beginnings of the ranking.
A press report yesterday gives some details about how the government combats bureaucracy, on the legal basis provided by the Anti-Red Tape Act (Arta) of 2007: among other tools, the Civil service commission conducts a Arta Report Card Survey at regional level (RCS) to gather feedback on how agencies, including local government units, follow provisions of their Citizen’s Charters. The RCS also rates the agencies performance and clients’ satisfaction in relation to frontline service delivery. Results of the survey may be used by the agencies in improving or modifying their frontline services and Citizens Charter.
The Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project (a Human Rights group) gives some background about the main item of legislation (Arta), which was introduced in 2007 in an attempt to make government services more business-friendly and help stamp out corruption. One of its most salient provisions is to automatically grant requests for renewal of licenses, permits and authorization should a government office fail to act within a prescribed period. The Anti- Red Tape Act was in fact only the latest in a long line of attempts to address inefficiencies and corruption in government services in the Philippines. They included the "People First, Not Later" program in 1994 which encouraged a client who is dissatisfied with the service of a government office to file a complaint at the Civil Service Commission. The Commission was supposed to ensure immediate action is taken to investigate and resolve the complaint. The “People First” campaign was later reinforced through the program TEXTCSC where citizens were invited to report irregularities and allegations of corruption in public service to the CSC simply by texting 0917-TEXTCSC. Transparency Reporting describes in detail how the "fixer" system works (fascinating), and concludes: "More than a decade after these programs were launched, the general public sentiment is that the quality of government service has improved very little if not actually worsened." For other measures in PH, see posts dated 11 September and 19 August.
A press report yesterday gives some details about how the government combats bureaucracy, on the legal basis provided by the Anti-Red Tape Act (Arta) of 2007: among other tools, the Civil service commission conducts a Arta Report Card Survey at regional level (RCS) to gather feedback on how agencies, including local government units, follow provisions of their Citizen’s Charters. The RCS also rates the agencies performance and clients’ satisfaction in relation to frontline service delivery. Results of the survey may be used by the agencies in improving or modifying their frontline services and Citizens Charter.
The Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project (a Human Rights group) gives some background about the main item of legislation (Arta), which was introduced in 2007 in an attempt to make government services more business-friendly and help stamp out corruption. One of its most salient provisions is to automatically grant requests for renewal of licenses, permits and authorization should a government office fail to act within a prescribed period. The Anti- Red Tape Act was in fact only the latest in a long line of attempts to address inefficiencies and corruption in government services in the Philippines. They included the "People First, Not Later" program in 1994 which encouraged a client who is dissatisfied with the service of a government office to file a complaint at the Civil Service Commission. The Commission was supposed to ensure immediate action is taken to investigate and resolve the complaint. The “People First” campaign was later reinforced through the program TEXTCSC where citizens were invited to report irregularities and allegations of corruption in public service to the CSC simply by texting 0917-TEXTCSC. Transparency Reporting describes in detail how the "fixer" system works (fascinating), and concludes: "More than a decade after these programs were launched, the general public sentiment is that the quality of government service has improved very little if not actually worsened." For other measures in PH, see posts dated 11 September and 19 August.
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