SOCIO-ECONOMIC POLICY INTEGRATION

Back in my days as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), I used to attend the now defunct Science & Technology Coordinating Council (STCC). At that time, the STCC practically became the oversight entity of the Department of Science & Technology (DOST), thus making it very active and very aggressively involved in using S&T as a potent force in socio-economic development.

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While the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) may not be faultless in some of its ways, it still is a good example of how government agencies should cooperate with, and coordinate with each other in working towards a common goal. Sad to say however, the approach of the NDCC seems to be on the reactive side and is not pro-active or developmental, considering that disaster preparedness should really be a moving target or a continuing concern.

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In theory, the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) is supposed to be on top of a national system of “development councils” that goes all the way down to the Municipal Development Councils (MDCs) with counterparts in the regional and provincial levels. Ideally, this system should really go down to the barangay level, but unfortunately, only the NDCC has done that, and rightly so. As it is now, there is a problem with this system at the regional level, because there is no equivalent regional government that could function as the counterpart of the Regional Development Councils (RDCs).

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In theory as well, the NEDA is supposed to gather and integrate the outputs of all the RDCs, which in turn should have gathered and integrated the outputs of all their Provincial Development Councils (PDCs) and also the outputs of the MDCs. Under this set-up, it would be very easy to implement a “bottom-to-top” approach in socio-economic development and management, but for some reason, the NEDA is not taking advantage of it, and seems to have adopted a “top-to-bottom” approach.

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Also in theory, the RDC-PDC-MDC system is supposed to assist in the planning and administration of the Internal Revenue Allocations (IRAs), but again unfortunately, this provision of the General Appropriations Act (GAA) is not being followed. In my own opinion, it would really be logical to include the planning and administration of the Countryside Development Funds (CDF) or the Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAFs) in the work of the said system, but we are still too far from that reality.

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Back in my days as Director General of the National Computer Center (NCC), we implemented the National Crime Information System (NCIS) as provided for by the law. The hardware and software components of that project were difficult enough to bring together, but as far as I am concerned, what was more difficult was to coordinate and integrate the inputs of about two dozen government agencies that were involved in the project. As I see it now, there is presently very little coordination and integration of the data coming from these agencies in pursuit of the justice system, and that is a separate problem by itself.

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As part of my public service activities, I am inviting all Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and People’s Organizations (POs) to join the Socio-Economic Development Alliance (SEDA), a new forum that I am now organizing. SEDA will essentially follow the format of the STCC and I will also apply the management lessons that I learned from the NCIS, but it will be privately led. At the national level, SEDA will invite the participation of all government agencies that are involved in socio-economic development.
At the regional, provincial and municipal level (including the cities), SEDA will coordinate and integrate the participation of NGOs and POs in the RDCs, PDCs and MDCs.

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The planning and management of socio-economic development in all levels is, and should be non-political. I realize that in this country, it is very difficult to separate what is political from what is developmental, but considering the public service challenge that is facing us, we should keep on trying and should not give up. I also realize that there are too many problems to tackle, but we could start with a few concerns that we could immediately act on to produce immediate results. For instance, we could start with pressing concerns in health, education, environment, employment and livelihood. I have started tackling these two problems in my radio program, and I have much to share with the prospective SEDA members.