A few days back, the Department of Budget and Management caused some tempest with its plan to rightsize the civil service aimed at reducing the number of government agencies — with some suggesting thousands of government workers would join the ranks of the jobless and unemployed.
First off, what does the idea of rightsizing mean? In the private sector as in the government, this is the process of restructuring — in this case the government — the bureaucracy so it can make a profit more efficiently and meet public service objectives.
In the private sector, organizations usually rightsize their business by reducing their workforce, reorganizing upper management, cutting costs, and changing job roles.
In general, rightsizing helps top management get a bird’s eye view on organization and assess its “as-is” state, including an evidence base for workforce sizing. At the same time, rightsizing does not disrupt human resources or personnel and helps management implement necessary changes at the same time.
In the May 2022 survey done by the Philippine Statistics Authority, the unemployment rate in this country of 111 million people was placed at 5.7 percent, which means that more than 2.7 million of the labor force are without jobs, while underemployment is estimated at 15 percent.
Some have raised concern about rightsizing as proposed by DBM.
We heard Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman say the plan is for a more compact and effective bureaucracy and is being refined for presentation to Congress before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. addresses the Filipino people in his first State of the Nation Address or SONA on July 25.
The plan’s all-embracing objective, according to Pangandaman, is to have a small bureaucracy that is agile and responsive in the modern era and will fix the agencies that have repetitive or overlapping functions.
The budget chief has said the savings from rightsizing — no final precise figures at this point — can be used to support more significant initiatives like the development and much needed infrastructure, social services, health-related programs and agriculture.
The plan will determine which of the 187 government agencies — including firms owned and managed by the government which employ more than 2 million people — will be merged, revamped or abolished.
We support the government’s plan to streamline the bureaucracy, high in the belief this will mean faster, better and reliable service for the Filipino people.
We cannot believe the 2 million affected by the rightsizing plan will posthaste become jobless, since their qualifications will take them away from overlapping functions and place them elsewhere for better and more efficient public service.
That is the rationale, in our view, for this righsizing.
