Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) Deputy Director Police Brigadier General Joaquin Alva, to the PNPA Senior Officials, and to the 1,200 cadets and PNPA employees and public servants present in today’s flag raising ceremony, magandang umaga po.

It is my honor and privilege to speak before the primary institution responsible for training the future leaders of the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP). You are the uniformed personnel who serve as our vanguards of peace and order, our vanguards of safety and security.

On behalf of the Filipino people, we thank you for your commitment and dedication to your respective mandates. Saludo po kami sa inyong lahat.

We, at the Department of Budget and Management, fully support PNPA’s mission to provide the best comprehensive education, training, and leadership development program to transform you, our dear Cadets, into God-centered, competent, and trustworthy public safety leaders.

Indeed, leadership ranks high in the PNPA Curriculum, and I agree with General Noble that it is an essential virtue that cannot be just taught, but should be caught. It is not just learned; it is developed.

Nevertheless, I will try my best to impart my humble experiences and lessons in leadership from my experiences in government service, especially at the DBM.

Throughout my almost twenty years as a public servant, I learned from my mentors, especially the late Senator Edgardo Angara, that we must always strive for reform-oriented public service, and restore the public's trust in the government. We have to let the people know that the government is working for them and not against them. And we can do this by ensuring transparency and accountability through our key reforms and initiatives.

An advocacy close to my heart that is an initiative towards transparency and public participation is the Philippine Open Government Partnership or PH-OGP. This provides an avenue for genuine citizen participation in government processes and a platform for collaboration between champions and movers in government alongside our active non-government actors.

Just last Friday, the PH-OGP Steering Committee chaired by yours truly met in Davao City to discuss the institutionalization of the PH-OGP through a draft Executive Order. We are also in the process of crafting the 6th National Action Plan which will amplify collaboration between government agencies and the non-government sector in the design, implementation, and monitoring of our programs.

I hope we can have more reforms and initiatives to establish public trust such as this, and intensify information dissemination and provide more opportunities for exchange with the public. This way, the government’s presence will be more felt by the very people it pledged to serve.

Our pursuit of reform-oriented service towards public trust is also evident in our 2023 Proposed National Budget which was crafted to ensure that no one will be left behind—from our public servants including our uniformed personnel, to the public that we are sworn to protect. We are investing heavily in human capital development to provide every Filipino a fighting chance to manage life’s uncertainties and achieve their full potential.

Towards uplifting the individual capacities of our people, including government employees and our uniformed personnel, we likewise fully support the thrust of PNPA’s Cadetship Program in consonance with the thrust of the PNP, BFP, and BJMP, to develop professional, morally upright, and dedicated public safety officers imbued with the values of justice, integrity, and service.

In fact, our 2023 Proposed National Budget has given some Php 191.85 billion to the PNP; Php 27.79 billion for the BFP; and Php 22.34 billion will be for the BJMP. And this is just some of the many aspects of our budget and reforms that aim to capacitate and empower our people, and equip them to provide the quality of public service that every Filipino deserves.

Rest assured that the DBM is one with PNPA in the realization of its vision to be a world-class center of excellence in public safety education, producing professional and service-oriented public safety leaders who can go above and beyond the call of duty. Let us always be champions of good governance and public trust, so that the people’s confidence in the bureaucracy may never waver.

Assalamu alaikum. Maraming salamat at mabuhay ang mga magigiting na tanod ng ating kaligtasan!

Good afternoon once again to all the advocates of good governance present here today. Thank you for joining us in this fourth quarter Philippine Open Government Partnership or PH-OGP Steering Committee Meeting. As we adjourn this gathering, I aim to remind us of our reasons for pursuing an open government.

The PH-OGP’s commitment to transparency, accountability, citizen engagement or public participation, and digital governance are all grounded in the overarching objective to increase public trust in the government.

We want public trust that is neither solicited nor imposed but earned through quality public service, and transparent and accountable governance.

So, how do we achieve that kind of public trust?

We could achieve this kind of public trust by integrating the power of technology in our governance. Moreover, we must introduce reforms and programs and see them through as it is only through constructive and open dialogue that we can improve together and achieve our common goal.

Lastly, we should do all these with public participation in mind. In our digitalization efforts, we should work on information dissemination and provide opportunities for exchange with the public. Of course, we want our published content—our National Action Plans included—to be understood by the people so that they know what their government is doing.

We want our every allocation, decision, and implementation to be scrutinized and even challenged by them so they know that they are involved in our decision-making.

Doing and listening—these are the two elements that create trust in a relationship. As public servants who bridge the government and the people, may we do these with willingness and excellence.

Let’s begin doing these as we work towards the institutionalization of the PH-OGP through the draft Executive Order that we have discussed today. More than setting the direction, programs, and activities of the PH-OGP, and providing oversight to the Secretariat, may the PH-OGP Steering Committee always be reminded of who we are doing these for: the Filipino people we are sworn to serve.

Assalamu alaikum. Magandang hapon po muli at mabuhay tayong lahat!

Representatives from Landbank of the Philippines, Philippine Veterans Bank, Development Bank of the Philippines, Anti-Red Tape Authority, Bureau of the Treasury, our colleagues from the Department of Budget and Management; good morning and welcome to today’s MOA signing ceremony.

True to its theme, “Building Collaborative Partnerships with Financial Institutions for Future-Proofed Digital Transformation,” this landmark event is proof of our united goal to achieve bureaucratic efficiency through digital transformation, especially with our Authorized/Modified Disbursement Scheme-Government Servicing Banks namely Landbank of the Philippines, Philippine Veterans Bank, and Development Bank of the Philippines.

The implementation of the online release of the Notice of Cash Allocation or NCA through the Action Document Releasing System or ADRS aims to eliminate the unnecessary steps of printing, physically signing, routing, and releasing of the printed Action Document to the banks’ Liaison Officers.

Releasing these documents in digital format may seem like a small step but this is a crucial digitalization initiative as it will not only improve ease of doing business; it will also bring us an estimated cost savings of around Php 2.8 million per month or around Php 33 million per year with the reduced costs for security paper, printing, supplies, and transportation expenses for physical claiming of documents by agency representatives.

Since the beginning of my term as Secretary, the institutionalization of budget reforms and digital transformation of the bureaucracy have been my top priorities. In fact, our proposed 2023 national budget–which has been ratified by Congress last Monday–prioritizes the transformation and digitalization of government processes, records, and databases through e-governance.

As such, I am delighted to note our progress in the ADRS Module Roll-out. As of date, the online Special Allotment Release Order or SARO and Advice of Notice of Cash Allocation Issued or ANCAI had been fully rolled out to thirty-eight Departments and 363 Agencies. There are also 7,358 registered users of the ADRS.

This is only one of the many projects we have for digitalization. So let me take this opportunity to thank our champion for digitalization, Undersecretary Sasa del Rosario for her invaluable contribution to my advocacy to go digital. It’s not everyday the government gets to recruit one of the best from the private sector. Thank you. This only goes to show her commitment to digital transformation of the government. Indeed, we are lucky to have her in this journey.

Now as we sign and execute this Memorandum of Agreement between the DBM and our Government-Servicing Banks, may we not only delineate our duties and responsibilities as parties in this digital transformation initiative, but more importantly, strengthen our commitment to promote efficiency, transparency, and accountability to better serve our public.

Thank you. Assalamu alaikum.

My greetings to our fellow champions of open government and good governance!

Assalamu alaikum.

My apologies for not being able to see you all in person. But I leave you in the very capable hands of Asec. Rolly Toledo who, being one of the Department’s top budget reformers, will represent the Department of Budget and Management well in this event.

In all previous budget engagements, in all the reforms the DBM has initiated, and in all fiscal policies formulated, we have always underscored the importance of having an open budget system—one that is transparent, fosters public participation, and has adequate budget oversight from the legislative and audit institutions.

And so, it is vital that we realize that open government does not only benefit the system, rather its advantages cascade to different sectors of society. It creates more stable conditions to incentivize investments from the private sector; sets the stage for ensuring public trust; and strengthens the country’s democratic institutions and principles.

Towards this end, I am very happy that we fared well in the results of the 2021 Open Budget Survey or OBS—the only independent and fact-based survey for open budget.

We garnered a transparency score of 68 out of 100, making us rank 19 out of 120 countries included in the survey. Although this is moderately lower than our score in 2019, this is still significantly higher than the global average of 45, which indicates that we have sufficient mechanisms in place to promote transparency in our budget processes.

With this, I would like to commend the previous administration under former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte and the DBM leadership before me.

This is an undeniably tough act to follow yet I am positive that we can do the same or even better, through the guidance and support of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.

On this end, we hope to fast-track our initiatives to digitize government processes and transactions through the implementation of the Integrated Financial Management Information System, as well as the enactment of the Progressive Budgeting for Better and Modernized Governance Bill or the PBBM Bill, which shall institutionalize the Cash Budgeting System. We are also committed to continue working towards an open and participatory government as we chair the Philippine Open Government Partnership Steering Committee.

Furthermore, we will take the recommendations of the OBS to heart, and study the feasibility of introducing these in our processes. We appreciate the insights of our partners from the academe and civil society organizations, and we look forward to our continued collaboration with them towards a more inclusive and participatory budgeting process.

Quoting former US President Barack Obama, “a budget is more than just a series of numbers on a page; it is an embodiment of our values.”

It is our fervent hope that through the practice of open budgeting, we are able to embody a government that holds integrity and accountability in high regard—values which I believe are key to the good governance that we have always yearned for.

Inshallah.

Maraming salamat!