The Philippine government is hosting the regional meeting for the Open Government Partnership in February 2025. For a country, whose checkered history in transparency, accountability, and participation in the last 20 years is confusing at best, the conference will likely be a contested plattform. For those who believe that there is something opportunistic about this meeting, as it can potentially focus the spotlight again on the forgotten open government values (and its related public discourse), this meeting is a useful avenue for civil society to engage in. At the other end of the spectrum,there will be others who will think that this is just for the “show”.
The meeting reminds me of the many times I have written about and spoken in similar gatherings in the past. I have been an avid supporter of the Open Government Partnership since its early days. The OGP, an international platform that aims to promote transparent, accountable, and responsive governments globally, was established in 2011. This multilateral initiative was initially composed of eight founding governments: Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It aims to promote transparency, empower citizens, combat corruption, and utilise technology and innovation to strengthen governance. Since its inception, more than 60 countries have endorsed the OGP principles and become members of the partnership, making commitments to strengthen internal governance systems, harness citizen participation in democratic processes, and improve public service delivery.
The Philippines, as one of the founding members, affirmed its commitment to open government reforms when, alongside its civil society partners, it developed and launched a national action plan aimed at employing innovative methods to enhance government transparency and accountability while improving the delivery of public services. The first OGP Action Plan 2011-2013 was ambitious in its commitments and comprehensive in content. It established foundational policies for better internal management (e.g. internal audit, financial management, citizens’ charter), initiated participatory mechanisms in development management (e.g. participatory budgeting, social audits, results-based performance), expanded social security provisions (e.g. household targeting system, local poverty reduction), and commenced the public disclosure of government information (e.g. FOI, open data portal).
On its second action plan and onwards, observers have noted the slow progress of governmental reforms committed to by the Philippines. The Open Data Portal has been rehashed after the change of administration in 2015, losing a substantive portion of historical procurement data, among others. Key strategic decisions of the government remain shielded from public scrutiny. Several corruption cases have hounded key government offices – from customs to the judiciary. While the Philippine government has parted a few curtains, full and protected external scrutiny is elusive. The open government behavior of the Philippines does not match the whole of government reform process that is desired in democratising governance.
This problematic attitude towards transparency and accountability continued even during the pandemic. The scandal that hounded the procurement of COVID-19 supplies remain unresolved until now, seemingly absolved the Duterte presidency of any wrongdoing, despite the fact that billions of Philippine taxpayers money were wasted because of this single incident. The Marcos Jr. administration seem to be promising several reforms – digitisation of government services, more participatory governance through the Bagong Pilipinas (New Philippines) initiative reminiscent of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s Bagong Lipunan (New Society), among others – but all these, as what some observers contend, are cosmetic changes in a context of new corruption allegations at the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Public Works and Highways.
So can the Government of the Philippines still fulfill the promise of open government?
No. If open government practice remains transactional than transformational.
In the Philippines, it does seem that open government practice has shifted from the explicit agenda of transparency and accountability, more particularly of those information that are politically-sensitive, to the use of technology to make government service delivery better, including information provision. Open government has become instrumentalised, a tool for generating transparency, accountability, or participation, without regard of underlying political conditions, power differences, nature of government leadership, quality of data and information, and other factors that are essential to democratic consolidation. As Mcgee and Edwards put it
“….transparency does not automatically lead to accountability; information will not generate state accountability to society without the pressure added by public collective action; and citizen voice enabled by ICT platforms may achieve institutional responsiveness where the problem is weak capacity to respond, but will not when the underlying problem is a lack of political will.”
Mcgee and Edwards
No. If open government does not shift the balance of power to the citizens.
There are a lot of promises of transparency on the part of the Philippine government. Transparency means that government seeks to inform citizens, who then can have the power to participate with informational assets in their hands. But this carries a multitude of assumptions: 1) that what the government discloses are true and accurate, 2) that the disclosure mechanism is accessible to its intended audience, 3) that people, in this case citizens, have the capacity to engage with the information, 4) that an enabling environment for a productive discourse is available, 5) that citizens are possessed of the same power as those within government, 6) and that government officials are willing to listen and act on the desires and demands of their constituents, 7) that the citizens can exact accountability from erring government officials and 8) institutions can enforce rules to promote transparency, participation, and accountability. What the Philippine Government constructs as transparency, limiting it to the notion of information or data disclosure, is significantly insufficient, its theory of change is wanting. People will still be at the mercy of the whims of powerful within the formal governmental structure.
Much can still be said here on the challenges and opportunities of open government in the Philippines, but I hold my horses this time and wait for the outcomes of the regional meeting. Fingers-crossed, some progress can be had, and some wins on the part of civil society can be documented.
Michael "Miko" Cañares 