SENATOR Ralph Recto on Saturday urged the government to print and publish a catalogue containing public service performance guarantees, from how fast travelers should exit out of airport immigration queues to police response time.
Dubbed as Booklet of Service Speed (Boss), the pocket-size booklet will contain the processing time for applied documents like licenses, response time from law enforcers like the police and firemen, and completion period for services asked.
“You can also call it Booklet of Service Standards,” said Recto.
He said these performance indicators were included in the national budget, part of reforms which link funds given to an agency to a set of promised outcomes.
Among the performance guarantees embedded in next year’s national budget are “the maximum 7-minute response time of firemen to all distress calls and the police vow to respond within 15 minutes to all calls for assistance.”
One particular interest to the public, Recto said, is the guarantee by the Metro Manila Development Authority that road traffic obstructions would be cleared within 15 minutes and for flood water to substantially recede within 20 minutes.
Recto said the Bureau of Immigration had promised “a gone in 40 seconds rule” in immigration exit and entry queues.
“But that benchmark applies to the moment the passport is handed over to the officer. What passengers want is a standard from the moment they queue,” he said.
In the case of passports, of which 3.1 million will be issued next year, the Department of Foreign Affairs has promised that these will be issued within the prescribed period.
The Department of Transportation has promised a 20 percent reduction in airline travel time delays. The department has also included in its 2018 performance guarantees an average 40 kilometers per hour speed of Metro Railway Transit trains.
However, it has yet to determine its maximum processing time for driver’s licenses and car registrations for 2018.
But for those registering new vehicles, the DoTr’s standing pledge, based on the 2017 national budget, is that you will get your registration papers, complete with plates and stickers, within seven days.
For motor vehicle registration renewals, the current deadline, per the 2017 General Appropriations Act, is two hours, complete with stickers.
For those renewing their driver’s license, the unchanged DoTR’s pledge for the year is that 90 percent of applications will be renewed within one hour.
Some agency targets are outcome-based, like the ones the Department of Health has attached to its P164.9-billion request. The DoH said more than 90 percent of tuberculosis cases referred to it will be treated and healed.
“In the case of the Department of Public Works and Highways, its budget says 1,592 kilometers of new roads and 1,504 kilometers for repair will be completed within deadline and according to specifications,” Recto said.
For the Environment department, its goal is to plant 197 million seedlings in 201,852 hectares of new tree plantations.
Recto said the department should not only guarantee it would achieve this, “but provide proof to senators that billions of trees have been planted in more than one million hectares since 2010.”
He also said minimum speed limits should be imposed in the agency with the biggest appropriation but also plagued by slow spending, the Department of Education.
“To avoid backlogs which hurt students, a six-month deadline should be imposed in hiring teachers and a one-year deadline in building classrooms,” Recto said. For 2018, Malacañang has asked Congress for money for new 81,100 teachers and 47,000 classrooms.
Recto said the budgets of agencies did not only come with peso signs but with performance guarantees.