Last November 17, 2017, the Development Academy of the Philippines thru the Center of Excellence on Public Sector Productivity conducted the 5th installment of the eight KARTILYA Sessions comprising this year’s ‘Productivity Series.’ The theme of the Session was “Performance Management and Productivity.” There were two speakers in the event: Dir. Gerald Janda of the Department of Budget and Management who discussed “Performance-Based Management and Incentive Systems (PMIS) in the Philippines” and Assistant Secretary Amuerfina Reyes of the Department of Labor and Employment who presented the “Implementation of the Results- Based Performance Management System (RBPMS) in DOLE.”

Towards A More Responsive Government. Director Janda stressed the point that Administrative Order 25 series 2011 otherwise known as ‘Results-Based Performance Management System’ and the Executive Order No. 80 series 2012 also known as ‘Performance- Based Incentive System’ were laws passed to restore the confidence of the Filipino people in the capacity of the public servants to make people’s lives better, safer, and healthier. It aims to mobilize a more responsive government, streamline government operations, and enforce a more transparent bureaucracy. This Program resulted to integration and harmonization of performance assessments of oversight agencies, transparency of agency performance, improvement in quality of performance measurements and management, and increased compliance to governance standards and statutory requirements for accountability and transparency. One big challenge faced by the government according to Dir. Janda is how to show meaningful results to the citizens proving in effect that what the government is doing is for the benefit of the Filipino people. Assistant Secretary Reyes shared the implementation efforts of DOLE relative to performance management. She highlighted performance monitoring and coaching to inspire co-workers in the department. She pointed out that it is in looking for instances where we can be of help to other people that will guide them to achieve more. He zeroed in on the idea that RBPMS implementation is not about the incentive or the money involved but it is all about our performance and how our clients perceive our performance. ASec. Reyes gave much emphasis on better government performance and accountability.

Some Take Aways.  This Session gave us two insights to learn: first, effecting change in the performance management means enhancement of the performance management system such as but not limited to integration of HR systems, clarification of Secretariat roles, setting of dates for performance management activities, amendment in the rating scale to indicate higher performance standards, and inclusion of new awards and incentives. These changes hopefully would be translated to acceleration indeed of public sector performance and productivity. In the long run, this would contribute to enhancing our government’s competitiveness; and second, the performance of our duty as part of our public service is our moral obligation and social responsibility to the Filipino public. It is not equated automatically to monetary and non-monetary awards. Meritorious performance would mean performing above what is expected of us leading to innovation and further development. This makes us more competitive.

University of the Philippines assistant professor Dr. Tina Clemente and Development Academy of the Philippines Senior Vice President for Programs Magdalena Mendoza encouraged government offices to measure productivity in order to track their performance, and also to discover opportunities for improvement as well as document their best practices. Clemente and Mendoza served as the resource persons during the DAP’s fourth Kartilya Session (Productivity Series) entitled “Measuring Public Sector Productivity” which was held on November 10, 2017 in Pasig City.

Role of public sector productivity. “How the public sector operates actually affects the competitiveness of a country as a whole,” emphasized Mendoza as she debunked the compartmentalized measurement of productivity between the private and public sectors. The public sector, according to the DAP SVP, has two responsibilities when it comes to productivity enhancement – to improve its own productivity, and then enable all other organizations, both from the government and the private sector, to enhance theirs. Clemente supported this holistic perspective on productivity by citing examples from the World Economic Forum’s survey on Ease of Doing Business.  She stated that the top three problems in doing business in the Philippines are 1) inefficient government bureaucracy, 2) inadequate supply of infrastructure, and 3) corruption. This she said is an illustration that public sector productivity should not be treated in a vacuum, but rather seen as an aspect that is related to all socio-economic fields in the country.

Measuring productivity. Clemente presented the technical terminologies in productivity measurement such as inputs, outputs, outcomes, ratio indicators and total factor productivity (TFP).  She stressed that the most important point in her talk is about TFP, which is the part of growth that cannot be accounted for by inputs. This includes less tangible indicators such as existing systems and services. Mendoza discussed a case study that measured the productivity of the Bureau of Internal Revenue from year 2000 to 2012 using the Atkinson Review methodology, which may also be applied to other government agencies. Though measuring public sector productivity is a difficult exercise due to poor data availability and comparability, there are important reasons to pursue the task. DAP President and Chief Executive Officer Elba S. Cruz pointed out in her opening remarks that the measurement of public sector productivity boils down to public accountability. She said that since the expenditure of government comes from the people’s taxes, “taxpayers are naturally interested in how the government uses the proceeds from their tax payments.”

On October 27, 2017, the Center of Excellence on Public Sector Productivity in partnership with the Office of Institutional Partnerships conducted a KARTILYA Session titled, “Rightsizing the Government and its Impact on Productivity.” The resource speaker was a renowned political scientist in the country – Dr. Clarita Carlos of the University of the Philippines – Diliman. This is the effort of the Development Academy of the Philippines to provide an avenue where government agencies, the academe, and other sectors are gathered to discuss relevant issues and concerns affecting national development and productivity such as rightsizing.

The Main Point. Anchoring on the pending legislation: namely, House Bill 5707 and Senate Bill 1395, Dr. Carlos asserted that bureaucratic reform has to be pursued and implemented by the government in the entire bureaucracy by either streamlining or re-engineering government agencies along three areas: structural reform, process and procedures, and human resources. But such a step for Dr. Carlos has to be based on a national strategy framework since such bureaucracy cannot happen as a stand-alone but has to serve as a handmaiden of that strategy.

Things to Remember. Dr. Carlos continued to argue that bureaucratic reform has to be underpinned by a philosophy of good life. The streamlining and re-engineering efforts are made to regulate the entire institution in order to promote the common good; in effect providing good (or better) services to the people. She underscored that together with political commitment, our leaders should also have the political courage to do bureaucratic reform.

Some Rejoinders. Assistant Secretary Myrna Chua of the Department of Budget and Management shared that they are asking the Congress to grant authority to the President of the Philippines to right-size all departments and agencies under the Executive Branch and those created by laws. Dr. Carlos suggested that the best way to fast track rightsizing is for the President to create a Presidential Commission that is apart from the bureaucracy to do the reform. Ms. Angelica Ramirez of the Department of the Interior and Local Government commented that one best way to reform is through international standardization, which according to Dr. Carlos is where the ASEAN is actually going i.e. ISO Certification. The forum revolved on possible ways to realize the reform implying that participating agencies do recognize the need for rightsizing the government.

Participating Agencies. There were 88 participants coming from the following agencies: the Civil Service Commission, Department of Education, Ateneo de Manila University, City Council of Manila, Presidential Commission on Good Government, City of Malabon University, Department of Science and Technology, San Sebastian College, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Development Academy of the Philippines, Department of the Interior and Local Government, and Department of Budget and Management. _ “Rightsizing the Government and its Impact on Productivity” is the third installment of the eight KARTILYA Sessions dubbed as ‘The Productivity Series.’

The Philippines, through the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) and the Asian Productivity Organization (APO), successfully hosted the International Conference on Public Sector Productivity (ICPSP) on October 10-12 at the DAP Conference Center in Tagaytay City. DAP President and Chief Executive Officer Elba S. Cruz opened the conference with the current state of productivity in the public sector. “For the public sector, the journey has been far more complex because of constraints that include limited knowledge or access to updated technology as well as the reluctance to modify or replace long-standing systems and processes,” Cruz said. The ICPSP provided an excellent venue to discuss among public sector professionals the challenges hindering public sector productivity, as well as to come up with ways to resolve them.  Office of the President Deputy Executive Secretary and keynote speaker Alberto A. Bernardo was optimistic and took pride in the ICPSP.  He said, “The hosting of this conference highlights greater accountability to our public sector agencies to be more agile and responsive in bringing results and achieving outcomes for the benefit of our citizens.”  

About the DAP: The DAP is a government-owned and controlled corporation founded by Leonides Virata and Onofre Corpuz on June 23, 1973.  Today, the DAP is known as a government think tank and training institution.  The DAP, being the National Productivity Organization of the Philippines, serves as the APO Secretariat and the implementing institution of the APO’s Center of Excellence on Public Sector Productivity, a distinction the country earned in 2015.

The Center of Excellence on Public Sector Productivity is sponsoring eight KARTILYA Sessions dubbed as ‘The Productivity Series focusing on relevant issues and concerns affecting national development and productivity. The said sessions will focus on foresight, education, leadership, rightsizing, productivity measurement, performance management, smart regulation, innovation laboratory, and knowledge management. Last October 13, 2017, the theme of the ‘Kartilya’ Session was ‘Foresight and Education in Productivity.’ This is the first installment of the said eight sessions. There were two resource speakers who graced the event: Dr. Santhi Kanoktanaporn, the Secretary-General of Asian Productivity Organization, who delivered a presentation titled, ‘Harnessing Foresight for the Public Sector’ and Cong. Jose Maria Sarte Salceda, the 2nd District Representative of the Province of Albay, who gave a talk on, ‘Increasing Productivity through Quality Education.’

Foreseeing the Future. Secretary General Kanoktanaporn stressed the point that the future does not actually exist because it is simply built by human being. But given that nature of the future, scenario planning is a must. Scenario planning, according to Kanoktanaporn, is more than forecast planning. Scenario planning is used when both uncertainty and complexity are high. It is done through three approaches: deductive, incremental, and inductive approaches. Definitely, there is a need for strengthening strategic foresight capability. For him, institutionalizing strategic foresight capacity requires a paradigm shift and at the same time a cultural shift towards creating a learning organization. He believes that countries should consider moving from traditional planning and national analysis to prospective (scenario) analysis and global perspective.

Educating the Youth. Cong. Salceda through his RA 10931 known as Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act aimed to increase the participation rate among all socioeconomic classes in tertiary education. He presented and explained the provisions on free higher education in state universities and colleges, national government to pay the tuition of students enrolled in local universities and colleges, free technical-vocational education and training in post-secondary technical-vocational institutions, tertiary education subsidy for Filipino students, and student loan program for tertiary education. Given this law, it is projected that there will be 40% increase in enrolment and 30% increase in graduation in HEI’s in the next five years. But this needs greater CHED oversight in SUC’s and private HEI’s. To push to improve quality of education, there should be a pressure for international benchmarking.

The Things We Learned. The DAP Senior Vice President, Ms. Magdalena L. Mendoza, gave us three things learned in the Session: first, foresight capability is key to sustainable productivity; second, education, a critical determinant of the overall standard of living, is directly linked to productivity; and third, taking pro-active stance in harnessing productivity through education guided by strategic foresight is the call of the time. Indeed, education and foresight become our drivers for social change. Given the rate of change in our societies, it is crucial that national government agencies, the academe, and the local government units, should play positive and critical role in enriching our nation’s productivity and ensuring our social development. Hopefully, the insights we realized will inspire and excite us to push things more and go beyond our limits. ___ The Session was attended by more than 150 participants (greater than what was expected) coming from NGA’s, the Academe, LGU’s, and other sectors.

Top executives of the Mongolian Productivity Organization, one of 20 member organizations of the Asian Productivity Organization, recently paid a visit to the Development Academy of the Philippines, the implementing and focal organization of the Philippines as the APO’s Center of Excellence in Public Sector Productivity. The Mongolian executives led by Yamaaranz Erkhembayar, an APO director and Chairman of the Board of the MPO, hoped to learn from the DAP the rudiments of how the country became the COE in Public Sector Productivity, with DAP President Antonio Kalaw Jr. and the Academy’s top quality and productivity officials briefing the MPO executives. Shown in picture are (from left) Ma. Rosario Ablan, AO 25 Secretariat Program Manager; Batbileg Tsagaan, Expert and APO Liaison Officer for the MPO; Erkhembayar; Kalaw; Amarsaikhan Damdinjay, Executive Director of the MPO; Carlos Sayco Jr., DAP Senior Fellow and APO Liaison Officer for the Philippines; Magdalena Mendoza, DAP Senior Vice President for Programs; and Arnel Abanto, DAP Vice President and Productivity and Development Center Managing Director.