Local government units that are adopting more efficient and simpler systems for registering businesses can expect to increase their respective revenues by 12 percent to 15 percent, according to the National Competitiveness Council.

Guillermo Luz, NCC co-chairman for the private sector, said Thursday that 126 LGUs have streamlined their business permits and licensing systems (BPLS) through a program that the Departments of Trade and Industry and Local Government had launched.

Luz said these LGUs have reported significant improvement in their tax revenues, citing as examples General Santos City with a gain of 15 percent and San Fernando City in Pampanga with 12.6 percent.

“LGUs should realize that it is important to streamline their BPLS,” Luz said. “This way, they attract more investments aside from earning more in taxes.”

NCC data show that San Fernando City earned P127.6 million in the first quarter, rising from P113.3 million in the same period last year.

The BPLS streamlining program is aimed at enabling LGUs to adopt a single application form—the same one used going through permits from various government agencies—to reduce the number of steps of the process and thereby shorten the processing time, and cutting the number of signatures needed to secure permits.

San Fernando City was able to reduce its BPLS process to two steps, needing only one signature. Using a unified form, registration takes only 25 minutes.

According to Luz, the NCC has targeted 480 LGUs for enlistment in the program, including 86 of the 126 LGUs who have completed all the necessary processes in streamlining their BPLS.

“The remaining 40 LGUs were not on the priority list but joined the program voluntarily,” Luz said. “We don’t turn away such LGUs, in fact, they are most welcome.”

He said there are 82 more LGUs that are currently undertaking the program.

Priority LGUs are those with the most number of business establishments; those with high investment potential in priority sectors like agribusiness, mining, tourism, and business process outsourcing; and those which had received grants specifically for BPLS streamlining.

“The other criteria are the willingness of the LGU to reform its processes and the commitment of the private sector to participate in the reform process,” Luz said.

“To measure the effectiveness of the program and the efficiency of the BPLS of LGUs, the NCC will conduct a client satisfaction survey in the key cities outside Metro Manila,” he added.

The President was the guest of honor and speaker on the second day of the 58th general assembly of the LCP held at the Century Park Hotel on Saturday (Jan. 8), where he was presented with the LCP Strategy Map and two Memorandums of Agreement the group signed with the Department of Education and the Institute of Solidarity in Asia.

LCP president Oscar Rodriguez said the mayors’ league is committed to work side by side with the national government in reducing poverty incidence and ensure the delivery of basic social services in line with the Millennium Development Goals.

Mayor Rodriguez of San Fernando City, Pampanga noted that the Philippine cities will be the “engines of sustainable development, champions of good urban governance and catalysts for nation-building committed to the improvement of the lives of our constituents.”

He said the LCP will expand the capabilities of its members to enable them to implement measures to reduce poverty, increase their local income, expand small to medium enterprises and lower their unemployment rates.

“We will constantly track these indicators to monitor our performance,” Rodriguez added.

The sharing of best practices will be improved and institutionalized in partnership with the Department of Interior and Local Government, the local and international development partners, the private sector, NGOs and people’s organizations, he said.

The LCP vows to enjoin cities to implement standards and reform policies and programs of the national government by strictly implementing the Anti-Red Tape Act in their areas.

“The League is your partner in creating a culture of good governance, of transparency and accountability,” Rodriguez said.

State Agencies Pursue Anti-Corruption Reforms

Amidst the Frenzy brought about by the upcoming May 2010 Elections, the Philippine government has committed to sustain much-needed reforms to strengthen Public Institutions. (Public Governance Forum News Letter)

Links to these are below:

Department of Health

Department of Education

Department of Public Works and Highways

Department of Transportation and Communications

Philippine National Police

Bureau of Internal Revenue

Likewise, Dr. David P. Norton, Co-Founder of the Balanced Scorecard and Director and Founder of the Palladium Group, has acknowledged the work of Dr. Estanislao: “The creation of a common performance management process for national governments represents, in our view, the ultimate use of the BSC.” He first describes the ISA Chairman’s article as “a classic study of managing change” on the surface, and moves to noting “Dr. Estanislao’s role as a change agent… at every step… He has given us a true role model for managing change.” Dr. Norton ends with a realistic but hopeful view on the odds of success in Philippines: “The challenges facing the Philippines are immense. A performance management
system alone is no guarantee of an improved quality of life for its citizens. Yet benefits are already accruing as the movement continues to grow. We thank Dr. Estanislao for sharing these experiences with us.”

Please click on link below to view the articles from the issue:

A Bottom-Up Approach to National Governance with Comments from Dr. Norton

Balanced Scorecard Report

Harvard Business Publishing, Vol.12, No.2, March -April 2010.

The four-day boot camp dubbed as “Governance ABC: The Fundamentals of Making Performance Governance System (PGS) Work,” aims to equip participants coming from the local government units of Iloilo, Calbayog and Naga, the National Electrification Administration, the Philippine Navy, Philippine Military Academy, and the private sector on strategic PGS implementation and formulation.

The boot camp includes organizational sessions and strategic PGS discussions with Zaens and ISA officials Nick Fontanilla, Jesus Estanislao and Marie Escueta.

“This is the first ever boot camp we are holding and we chose the city because it is already implementing and using the PGS. We did so because it has to be realistic and not theories alone. The city’s experience means a lot and will greatly help our associates in understanding strategies of PGS,” ISA Executive Director Christian Saens told Sun.Star Pampanga.

A tour to the slaughterhouse, sagip-Ilog project and the Nuestra Señora Integrated School where best practices will be observed first hand is also part of the itinerary.

City Administrator Ferdinand Caylao and City Planning Office Chief and Multi-Sectoral Governance Council Secretary Fernando Limbitco represented the City Government, which is a Hall of Famer of the PGS.

Councilor Jimmy Lazatin is also part of the city delegation.

For his part, Mayor Oscar Rodriguez thanked the ISA for choosing the city as its host.

“We have gone a long way in the PGS and we are very happy to share with you our experiences as well (as) pains and triumphs with the system,” he said.

The City Government will once again be enrolled in the hall of fame during the Asia Pacific Palladium Group (Washington) Summit in Manila on September 22 this year, Zaens noted.

Published in the Sun.Star Pampanga newspaper on February 10, 2010.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue, Philippine National Police, Departments of Education, of Transportation and Communications, of Health, of Public Works and Highways have “chosen to initiate this process” after discovering “there’s unfortunately no national vision where we could align our respective vision statements.”

Cesar Bautista, former ambassador extraordinary plenipotentiary to London, said at the forum the six government units were tasked to each formulate a performance governance system (PGS).

Business Mirror, Sept. 25, 2009

DO our top government leaders have even a faint idea of where the Philippines should be about 20 years from now? If they have, they have managed all these years to keep it under their collective hats.

Noticing they are having a hard time with their own objectives with no guidance from a missing national vision of the Philippines, several government agencies banded together in an effort to have what they call a “common scorecard of public governance” and presented it in a forum in Makati on Thursday.

The Bureau of Internal Revenue, Philippine National Police, Departments of Education, of Transportation and Communications, of Health, of Public Works and Highways have “chosen to initiate this process” after discovering “there’s unfortunately no national vision where we could align our respective vision statements.”

Cesar Bautista, former ambassador extraordinary plenipotentiary to London, said at the forum the six government units were tasked to each formulate a performance governance system (PGS).

Bautista, who is also National Competitiveness Council chairman, added the managers of these agencieswere also tasked to craft a common vision of what the Philippines would be 20 years from now.

These two actions, they hope, would help them translate their strategies into concrete steps on how this vision can be achieved, as well as establish the key indicators that the goals are being accomplished, according to Bautista.

“This is something unique,” said balanced public governance scorecard originator David Norton. “What I’ve seen happening here is an evolutionary approach.”

Norton, also director of balanced scorecard consultancy firm Palladium Group, said these government agencies “should go ahead and build strategy as much as they can at their own level. But they should take it to the higher level [the executive] so that they become a catalyst for [good]governance.”

Palladium’s Ivan Choi said the governance scorecard can be used by Filipino voters to monitor government performance. “They would now have a basis to ask why the scores are low in this area, like education, than promised or stated in the scorecard. They can check the promises of politicians or the claims of officials that this strategy is working well for the people.”

A given example of the scorecard is the local government of the City of San Fernando in Pampanga, which was certified by Palladium as having institutionalized a balanced scorecard system.

According to the city government’s document, it envisions having developed a sense of pride of place among San Fernandoans by 2015. But this can only be reached if the city government is able to improve the socioeconomic condition of its people and have generated employment opportunities.

The city is given a score for every objective and strategy, e.g., social services and security, business friendliness, greenness and cleanliness, etc.

Norton said his rule of thumb is for an agency to allot 5 percent of its revenue to fund such initiative. It is also ideal to appoint three people to form a team that will go into monitoring scorecard performance full time.

The return or benefits of PGS, he said, could be expected after two to three years. One of the benefits is generating local income. For example, the City of San Fernando has decreased its dependency on its internal-revenue allotment to 49 percent last year from nearly 53 percent in 2007.

It took the City of San Fernando almost five years to reach higher scores and gain certification.

An official said during the forum one of the challenges in doing the PGS is the culture of patronage politics that permeates Philippine society.

But Norton urged them, “never give up the fight.”  D. Estopace

Original Article in Business Mirror, Sept.25, 2009

Iloilo City ranks among world’s four top-performing organizations

IT was just last year when thousands of residents in this city found themselves on rooftops with a desperate cry for help after being ravaged by the worst flooding in its history. Now, Iloilo City has been earning accolades for its inspiring turnaround story.

Iloilo City was recently ranked one of the four top-performing organizations in the world by the Palladium Group, Inc., a global organization that helps organizations make better decisions through the adoption of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) model developed in Harvard.

In addition to Iloilo City, also elevated to the Palladium Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for Executing Strategy™ were: Dongwha Enterprises (South Korea), Kiwibank (New Zealand), and the Korean Customs Service (South Korea). The Hall of Fame award honors “breakthrough business results” by organizations that have achieved business excellence through the use of the BSC, the world’s preeminent performance management system.

The Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA), an advocacy organization for good governance, partnered with Iloilo City in using the BSC to help improve public accountability and promote responsible citizenship and economic and social development. Since its adoption, citizen satisfaction has risen 15%, manufacturing capitalization has expanded fourfold, and National Achievement Test results in the City’s public schools were up 20%.

“The BSC has enabled us to clearly communicate strategy and align our workforce through a common language and shared objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives,” said Mayor Treñas who led Iloilo City officials in the induction ceremony at the 2009 Palladium Asia-Pacific (APAC) Summit in Jakarta, Indonesia. The Palladium Group announced the results in a press statement from Jakarta and Boston, Massachusetts on Oct. 5.

“The process has helped make our city vibrant, well-governed, and prosperous, establishing a roadmap for Iloilo to achieve even more as a Premier City by 2015,” the Mayor added.

Founded in 2000, the BSC Hall of Fame program today has a roster of 128 honorees that span the private and public sectors in more than 20 countries, including Hilton Hotels, Infosys Technologies, Motorola, Ricoh Corporation, and the Singapore Ministry of Manpower.  Winners are selected based on the quality of their BSC implementation and the results they demonstrate over a period of at least two years.

In the Philippines, the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA), founded by former Finance Secretary Jesus P. Estanislao, pioneered the adoption of the BSC in public governance. It uses the Performance Governance System (PGS), a strategic management tool that enables entire communities such as Iloilo City to channel their energies, abilities and knowledge to pursuing one path towards long-term development.

Apart from Iloilo City, other local organizations that follow the PGS are the City of San Fernando, Pampanga; Marikina City; Calbayog, Samar; Naga City; Municipality of Bani, Pangasinan; Balanga, Bataan; the Philippine Military Academy; and the nursing and accountancy professions.