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Accountable Public Management of Funds for Local Government Units

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Author: Rabby Q. Lavilles (Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology)

The transparency of budget allocation and utilization of public funds among local government units are indicators of good governance at the grassroots level.

The interactions of citizens and government, particularly local government units (LGU), create a connection that helps establish a mutual relationship for a forward-thinking development. One aspect that takes a major role in this healthy relationship is transparency and accountability. Transparency of government spending is based on the intended plans and allocated funds, and the accountability of the authorized government representative to justify the actions they made. These two important attributes helped established trust in government.

While the national government allocations for local funds have been defined by various policies, laws, and guidelines, data for reporting at the local level has a limited assessment of how it performs and is aligned with national priorities. Knowing these priorities and how local government units respond to aligned to national priorities matters in achieving various government programs. For example, the national government allocated local government funds for its priority programs like the Assistance to Disadvantaged Municipalities. The fund is intended to support the basic services for the implementation of their priority programs or projects. For example, in this case, providing basic services such as water systems projects, access roads, or disaster-related facilities. On the other hand, reporting for appropriation and projects of LGU is also reported.

Given the situation, it is imperative that a monitoring tool can be developed to provide alignment of the LGU fund appropriation and the national government spending. Moreover, this is also a proper way to examine if the allocated programs were spent based on their original allocation. Using published LGU data (e.g. https://www.iligan.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Annual-Budget-Report-2020.pdf), a structured data can be created to organize the uploaded data by the LGU. This activity can be done through volunteer programs such as in a university workshop for open data government. Using data and related analytics tools can be a good way to provide a summary and comparison of various government allocations and LGU’s actual implementation of the program. Although data collection and organization can be daunting, the resulting open data that can be generated will help evaluate citizens on how LGU has been performing in terms of its priorities or mandates. Moreover, this will also create an observing tool for government officials to be aware of government spending and priority.

The power of data and related platforms to establish transparent government spending can be a step toward more accountable local government officials. It is important that citizens will be able to see where their taxes go and how the elected government officials improve the community in relation to government priorities.

This article is the author’s reflection on the insight gained from the recently concluded OCDex 2022 Public Data Analytics Fellowship Trainings.

For more information about the article, please reach out to the author: rabby.lavilles@g.msuiit.edu.ph or Layertech labs support at learning@layertechlab.com

Reflections: Data Analytics for Social Development

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Author: Mary Joy Canon (Bicol University)

Exploiting data through machine learning and analytics has been a trend solution in helping the government and other organizations alleviate pain in terms of social and economic aspects. Tools and methodologies in data analytics are used to generate insights, to recommend actions and more importantly to assist authorities in policy-making and translating these analyses to sound programs which directly benefit the people.  Perhaps, different organizations through their projects have already contributed, through data science, to social development and welfare. Kaggle, for instance was able to predict poverty levels to identify where the highest need is for social welfare assistance. This kind of project wouldn’t have been possible without access to data.

In the Philippines, the aim of social development mandated under the Constitution is to enact measures to protect and enhance the right of the people to human dignity, reduce social and economic inequalities and remove cultural inequities. Open data and analytics offer significant contribution and opportunities for the government and other bodies to create social impact.

Humanitarian Data Exchange of OCHA publicly made available a consolidated dataset on social development from World Bank Open Data. Data covers child labor, refugees, gender issues and disparities with key topics on education, health, labor force participation and political participation. This compilation of data, once processed and analyzed can be utilized in projects for social impact. The analysis can serve as an aid to identify the social issues or concerns that need immediate action by making essential benefits and services more accessible to the people. Data scientists, government officials and social sector leaders can work together to come up with a data-driven solution to take a major step forward in providing social transformation.

This article is the author’s reflection on the insight gained from the recently concluded OCDex 2022 Public Data Analytics Fellowship Trainings.

For more information about the article, please reach out to the author: mjpcanon@bicol-u.edu.ph or Layertech labs support at learning@layertechlab.com

Reflections: The Importance of Analysis of Government Data

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Author: Jimson Ornido (National University)

The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.

– Thomas Jefferson

Local government units play an essential role in the lives of their constituents and the community. In the National Capital Region alone, there are 16 cities and one municipality, consisting of 1710 barangays. Some of the functions performed by LGUs are as follows: taxation, law enforcement, administration, maintaining peace and order, providing public works, overseeing the local police force, and disaster management.

All of the mentioned functions involve a vast amount of data. Hence, data analysis is a crucial step in progressing the level of governance for LGUs. For example, disaster management will significantly benefit from the insights extracted from previous records. Contingency and emergency plans can be improved as a result.

This article is the author’s reflection on the insight gained from the recently concluded OCDex 2022 Public Data Analytics Fellowship Trainings.

For more information about the article, please reach out to the author: jvornido@national-u.edu.ph or Layertech labs support at learning@layertechlab.com


        	

        	        
        	        

    

	





    

                    
            

    	        
			
							

		            

                
        

        	

        		        	
        		
Maragondon and Ternate Tourism: Managing Riders and Businesses
        		                

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Author: Mark Emmanuel Malimban (National University)





Maragondon and Ternate are municipalities located in the southern part of Cavite. These rural areas are rich in history and culture: Ancestral houses, Churches, and Historical sites can be found here. Mountains and many types of bodies of water are also enjoyed by the locals and tourists.





Bikers and motorists were commonly seen roaming around the vicinity. These groups come in small to big groups mostly coming from other areas and cities. Popular destinations of these riders are the Kaybiang Tunnel and the stretch road of Maragondon-Ternate-Nasugbu with the scenic beaches; with these, a lot of businesses have sprouted in the area which helps the local and LGU.





The increase in riders in the area doesn’t only come with advantages, some unfavorable circumstances were also identified. LGU placed some necessary steps to reduce some of these inconveniences and concerns.





Data analytics can help in developing the policy for government efficiency and resiliency. Bikers’ regulations for compliance with national directives; peace and order structure for tourists especially riders; and management of businesses in terms of investment and promotion. Analysis can also be used as a reference in devising the Disaster Risk Reduction Plan and Local Risk Assessment.





Opportunities should not be wasted, they should be managed well to increase their potential. LGU Policies and regulations should be data-driven to ensure that all perspectives and opinions were considered. Managing and establishing appropriate directives for these bikers and motorists will ensure not just safety but also the progress of the community.





This article is the author’s reflection on the insight gained from the recently concluded OCDex 2022 Public Data Analytics Fellowship Trainings.





For more information about the article, please reach out to the author: memalimban@gmail.com or Layertech labs support at learning@layertechlab.com

        	

        	        
        	        

    

	





    

                    
            

    	        
			
							

		            

                
        

        	

        		        	
        		
Reflections: How the Academe can Leverage Data and Analytics to Help LGUs
        		                

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Author: Mia Amor C. Tinam-isan  (Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology) 





Data analytics has been the talk of the town. It finds its way across agencies (government or private), businesses, or various institutions in discovering valuable information about the existing and overwhelming amount of data. Data in these times exponentially increase and extracting valuable information from these data is essential. Information from the analysis can be used for decision making, coming up with a good marketing strategy, or even in establishing policies and guidelines from a broad test base. However, local government units per se in various parts of the Philippines, have not yet maximized the impact of data analytics. Varying factors might contribute to this such as unorganized data and non-computerized processes.





As part of the academic community, we can implement programs, webinars, and workshops that will empower our LGU to exploit their available data. It is imperative to partner with NGAs, and LGUs, and develop a working strategy for local government digitization. We can propose a simple initiative and start from the automation of LGU processes to organize and ensure the quality and the integrity of data for analysis. We can also venture into partnering with private agencies such as OCDex which has experienced in partnering with LGUs and had already developed numerous government data analytics applications. As of the moment, the College is continuously having a dialog with different offices of LGU-Iligan in crafting MOA for the digitization of the city government.





This article is the author’s reflection on the insight gained from the recently concluded OCDex 2022 Public Data Analytics Fellowship Trainings.





For more information about the article, please reach out to the author: miaamor.catindig@g.msuiit.edu.ph or Layertech labs support at learning@layertechlab.com

        	

        	        
        	        

    

	





    

                    
            

    	        
			
							

		            

                
        

        	

        		        	
        		
Educated Spending: An Insight on SUCs Utilization of MOOE
        		                

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Author: Sittie NB Pasandalanb (Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology)





Despite the reality of reduced budgets of the education sector especially of state universities and colleges (SUCs), institutions of learning have a good share of the annual National Expenditure Plan of the government. Generally, appropriations of SUCs can be categorized into three: Personnel Services (PS), Capital Outlay (CO), and Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE). Of these three categories, the MOOE should be of great interest as this gives insight to how a higher education institution (HEI) of the government utilizes government funds, ergo tax payers’ money.





MOOE is funds to be used for necessities (such as electricity and water) and for activities. HEIs are institutions expected to promote conservation of energy, it is worthy to look into the electricity and water bills of HEIs as these would speak of how HEIs are walking the talk. As employees of HEIs are taxpayers themselves, spending for activities should be examined to determine judiciousness in utilizing government funds, ergo taxpayers’ money. 





There is the disconnect between spending from one’s own pocket to spending from another’s pocket. Most likely, one finds it easier to spend from another’s pocket than one’s own. This begs the question of whether employees in HEIs (taxpayers in HEIs) can connect with the funds allocated to HEIs as taxes they have paid to the government, ergo their money. 





In the case of MSU-IIT, the MOOE for 2021 amounted to Php 297,321,732.24 (from Php 222,402,237.68 in 2020). The question on how the amount was utilized and if the expenses are necessities or mere expenditures to utilize funds allocated by the government begs to be answered. 





This article is a reflection on the OCDex 2022 Fellowship Programme for Researchers





For more information about the article, please reach out to the author: sittie.pasandalan@g.msuiit.edu.ph or Layertech labs support at learning@layertechlab.com

        	

        	        
        	        

    

	





    

                    
            

    	        
			
							

		            

                
        

        	

        		        	
        		
Predicting Public Procurement Irregularities in the COVID-19 Response of Local Government Units (LGUs) in the Philippines
        		                

        			         			        		

        		        		
        	

        	        	

        		

Authors: Barajas, J.R., Aspra, N., Gealone, P.J., Lucero, A., Padua, O., Ramos, M.





Motivated by ensuring transparency, fairness, and efficiency in public procurement at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic,  a team of engineers and faculty from Bicol Region (Region 5) in the Philippines collected, digitized, and analyzed public procurement data to inform the COVID-19 response of select Local Governments in the country. 





Highlights of the Report:





• On average, only 2 out of 10 LGU contracts have been awarded in
2020.

• For every Php1 spent, approximately Php1 remains unspent in
the procurement of goods and services made by LGUs.

• A total of Php481 billion were distributed across all LGUs in the country
for 2020 but only 10% of this budget was allocated for the procurement
of drugs and medicines. 40% of this budget went to construction
projects.

• Excluding LGU contracts not posted in the PhilGEPS website, only Php10
billion (2.16% of the total LGU budget) was allocated for COVID-
19 related contracts.

• An equivalent amount of Php720 million was potentially lost from 786
LGU contracts flagged as irregular.

• Audit findings for LGUs were primarily centered on directing accountable
officers to comply to documentary requirements mandated by existing
circulars, memorandums, and Philippine laws.

• A logistic regression model with an accuracy of 91.29% was developed
to identify contracts that are potentially irregular.





Short Summary of the Report:





From examination of 296,220 local government unit contracts, this project was able to develop a logistic regression model capable of predicting potentially irregular LGU contracts posted on the PhilGEPS website for the fiscal year 2020 at an accuracy of 91.29%. Validation of the model using metrics derived from the confusion matrix revealed that the developed model had a recall score of 1.0 and a precision score of 0.029. While the precision of the model may be
low, the high recall score is deemed more important in this use-case since it would be more costly for an LGU to miss out on irregular contracts. Overall, the developed prediction model is seen to be highly beneficial as a decision
support tool for LGUs since this could potentially narrow down the number of awarded LGU contracts to be legally reviewed resulting in a faster turnover of review cycles conducted within a given fiscal year.





The team’s collected datasets are available for download in the OCDex open data portal, attribution to the authors and contributors is required for use.





DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT HERE:




			

				

					

						

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Are you interested in this report? Do reach out to us at learning@layertechlab.com so that we can directly connect you with the authors, as well as the documentations they submitted.  

        	

        	        
        	        

    

	





    

                    
            

    	        
			
							

		            

                
        

        	

        		        	
        		
A proper REACTion in securing integrity on the public bidding of construction and infrastructure tenders amidst the COVID-19 pandemic
        		                

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(This article and the manuscript were submitted by the research team and may be updated in the future)





As of July 22, 2020, a total of 72,269 total COVID-19 cases has been reported, of which 46,803 are still classified as active cases [1]. With this continual rise of COVID-19 cases, it is estimated that this would cost about PHP2.2 trillion economic losses and is equivalent to at least a 2% contraction in the nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of the country [2]. As a consequence of this economic loss, about 26% of businesses operating in the country have already closed [3] resulting to about 100,000 Filipinos losing their jobs in the 1st half of 2020 [4] Indeed, there is an immediate need to control the spread of COVID-19 in the country to further mitigate the impact of the said disease to the Filipino people.






Fastracking the Public Procurement Process






The COVID-19 crisis in the country is a race against time. As seen from the success stories of our neighboring ASEAN countries, fast, efficient, and integral procurement played a crucial role in securing a “COVID-free” nationwide status. In response to this sense of urgency brought about the by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB) recently issued a series of resolutions to shift current publicly held procurement related to COVID-19 into negotiated procurement (emergency cases) and relax existing guidelines on the submission of vital bid documents [5]-[8]. For instance, expired business or mayor permits and unnotarized bid documents submitted by eligible bidders could already be accepted under these new GPPB issuances.






Challenge on Procurement Integrity and Transparency






While it is necessary to fastrack public procurement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is equally important to ensure integral and transparent implemented procurement processes to protect the interest of the Filipino people. Considered as one of the most vulnerable to corruption especially in this time of an emerging health crisis, relaxation of the imposed regulations is seen to compromise the overall integrity of the present public bidding processes. The acceptance of unnotarized bid documents, for instance, could promulgate misrepresentation on the capacity of an eligible bidder to faithfully undertake any contractual obligations if such barriers are removed.






REACT Risk Indexing System






Through a research grant given by Layertech Software Labs, Inc. and Hivos – People Unlimited, a group of faculty researchers from Bicol University College of Engineering looked closely into this present dilemma. Considering that shortening the time needed in awarding government contracts is of utmost priority, a rapid evaluator and assessor of contractor traits (REACT) risk indexing system was proposed and investigated as an intervening and supplemental tool to aid in upholding the integrity of the presently changed public procurement process on construction and infrastructure tenders related to the COVID-19 pandemic.






Using historical data periodically published by GPPB, assessment of an eligibility of a contractor based on its previous performance was further simplified by these researchers. Through REACT, three general classification of contractors were reported namely, “low risk”, “moderate risk”, and “high risk”. Contractors that were classified as “low risk” in the
proposed risk indexing system were found to be the most eligible as these contractors were reported to have at most an average negative slippage of 7.5%. In accordance to the findings reported by these researchers, it was further suggested that necessary precautions and scrutiny be exercised to those contractors that would be classified as “moderate risk” and “high risk” contractors since these contractors were found to have an average negative slippage of at least 24.9% which is well beyond the acceptable negative slippage of 15%.






Indeed, as presented in the case study of the proposed REACT risk indexing system to the publicly available historical data of contractors in Region V, the applicability of the proposed system to preserve integrity of the presently relaxed public procurement process has been validated.






With the validation of the efficacy of the proof of concept as reported by the researchers, the proposed REACT risk indexing system is seen to be a plausible data-driven solution in light of the challenges in the public procurement process amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.





Find the presentation slides below:




			

				

					

						

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Watch the full recording of the presentation below:














References:
[1] https://www.doh.gov.ph/covid19tracker
[2] https://business.inquirer.net/298536/p2-2-trillion-in-losses-cost-of-covid-19-impact-on-ph-economy
[3] https://mb.com.ph/2020/07/16/closure-of-26-of-ph-businesses-alarms-dti/#:~:text=Of%20the%202%2C135%20companies%20surveyed,status%20of%20business%20around%20the
[4] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1297196/dole-close-to-100000-lost-jobs-in-jan-june
[5] https://www.gppb.gov.ph/issuances/Resolutions/GPPB%20Resolution%20No.%2003-2020.pdf
[6] https://www.gppb.gov.ph/issuances/Resolutions/GPPB%20Resolution%20No.%2005-2020.pdf
[7] https://www.gppb.gov.ph/issuances/Resolutions/GPPB%20Resolution%20No.%2006-2020.pdf
[8] https://www.gppb.gov.ph/issuances/Resolutions/GPPB%20Resolution%20No.%2009-2020%20with%20SGD.pdf

        	

        	        
        	        

    

	





    

                    
            

    	        
			
							

		            

                
        

        	

        		        	
        		
HIV/AIDS in the Philippines
        		                

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By Team Anata





“TEAM ANATA”, a mix of advocates and Computer Science and IT Students,
 presents and discusses how they used data to identify key issues in HIV/AIDS   in the Philippines, its urgency, and comes up with data-backed recommendations  for government budgeting for HIV-related kits, trainings, and anti-retro-viral  drugs. 





This is Team Anata’s presentation at the Datathon2020: Evidence-Based Lobby and Advocacy competition and workshop, held at Bicol University College of Science, February 22-23, 2020.





Follow this page for more updates, as this study gets further substantiated. The contents of this page may be modified, updated, and further substantiated.





  




			

				

					

						

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This document is CC3.0 – Use with proper attribution 
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ )

        	

        	        
        	        

    

	





    

                    
            

    	        
			
							

		            

                
        

        	

        		        	
        		
PhilGEPS Dataset Columns to OCDS Mapping Guide
        		                

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PhilGEPS releases Philippine procurement datasets in excel format. These are downloadable in their official PHILGEPS OPEN DATA PORTAL. 





Below is a mapping Layertech and Partners in Legazpi made to convert PH-based procurement datasets to OCDS format. This is being used by partner researchers, developers, and students to create localized procurement monitoring tools. 





 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.




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