“Through the years, the bureaucracy has become so bloated, so top-heavy, that in truth, the number of government officials and their staff has become not just an expenditure burden, but one of the main causes of inefficiency”
This is an unsolicited suggestion to the new president and his team — direct an inventory of the appointive positions in government.
Which are necessary, and which are not?
Through the years, the bureaucracy has become so bloated, so top-heavy, that in truth, the number of government officials and their staff has become not just an expenditure burden, but one of the main causes of inefficiency.
Past leaders have had a penchant for creating new and more offices and agencies. There is, for instance, a National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) the head of which has Cabinet rank.
Then there is also a Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor.
Why in heaven’s name could not urban poor concerns be part of the NAPC mandate, and their officers placed under it? We could then do away with layers of over-lapping functions and save taxpayer money.
There are so many agencies and GOCC’s under the Department of Agriculture, more than 40 of them.
The president, having assumed the role of agriculture secretary in the meantime, could do well to assign a team of management experts, perhaps borrow them from the University of the Philippines, the state think-tank, to re-engineer these agencies into a lean and mean administrative machinery that can reverse the decline of our agricultural productivity.
In a previous column, I recall that there used to be four undersecretaries in the department.
There are now 11 USecs, some of them Useless. There are nine Asecs, some of whom sit on their asses in airconditioned offices doing virtually nothing.
Ditto the DENR, and mirabile dictu, even the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), with as many as eight Usecs!
President Marcos Jr. did right in reverting the once three-headed PCOO, a President Noynoy Aquino creation, into the Office of the Press Secretary as it was in his father’s time and before that.
The office of the presidential spokesperson has likewise been abolished, as the newly appointed press secretary, Atty. Trixie Cruz-Angeles, can do the task herself, and so far, excellently at that.
But there are so many offices under the current communications machinery of the president which may need re-structuring. Some are over-loaded with responsibilities; some with little functions.
The previous administration has made the PCOO bureaucracy so large, operating in various locations, and putting up virtually useless offices all over the country, some of which will likely turn into white elephants.
I wonder though, why E.O. 2 retained eight undersecretary positions, when some of these could be assigned to assistant secretaries and even directors within the OPS.
I recall that then Press Secretary Rod Reyes, who served as such under both PFVR and PJEE, had only two USecs.
Through the years, we have witnessed the penchant to create more and more top-paying positions in government, using the catch-all authority vested upon the presidency by the “continuing power to re-organize.”
That continuing power was intended by the framers of the Constitution to give the chief executive discretion and leeway to create offices owing to exigencies that in the course of time occur.
More often than not, that authority has been exercised to reward political favorites, without serious study of function, responsibility and accountability, thus creating more cost-inefficiency and service-ineffectiveness.
President Corazon C. Aquino assigned then Assemblyman Luis R. Villafuerte, a management expert (once senior VP of Bancom Development Corporation under the highly respected Sixto K. Roxas) who later became governor and congressman of Camarines Sur, to submit a government re-organization plan. He did.
But implementation of the re-organization plan was spotty, whether in Pres. Aquino’s term or thereafter, with presidents advised by sub-alterns, adding more and more offices.
Of course, the president’s father was criticized for creating so many state-owned corporations (GOCCs), often functioning without proper coordination with line departments and bureaus, and up until the series of Salary Standardization Laws, with conflicting salary scales.
A team of management experts from the UP can sift grain from chaff, reviewing even the creation in 2011 of the GCG, or Governance Commission for GOCCs, a reaction to the high allowances granted by GOCC boards to themselves and high officials, which became a scandal during the PGMA administration.
And while on the subject of inventory of government positions, Pres. Marcos Jr. may also want to have a thorough review of the laws that have been enacted through the beginning of civil government in the country, as far back as Commonwealth laws that may have become irrelevant and outdated.
This should include reviewing the laws passed during the Third and Fourth Republics, as well as the presidential decrees issued by his father during the martial law era.
This is a tedious job, but experts from the UP Law Center and elsewhere in academia, utilizing IBP officers as resource persons, can surely begin to undertake the synchronization of our legal codes.
At a time when there is a clear paucity of financial resources, with so many public needs crying for prioritization, from health to food, education to transportation, it is indeed high time to review the costs of maintaining government.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. with his huge electoral mandate, can start this streamlining, this re-engineering of a huge bureaucracy operating under outmoded and conflicting legislations, and make it a lasting legacy as he adds his stones for the edifice of the nation.