Are we the only ones who find it ironic that the Duterte administration would seek to cut red tape in government by adding another government office that seeks to cut red tape in government?
This seems to be what happened when President Duterte recently signed Executive Order 129, which ordered the creation of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Streamlining Government Processes (OPASGP).
In a nutshell, the OPASGP’s mission is to cut red tape in government, the same mandate as that of the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA), another government agency created by the Duterte administration through Republic Act 11032.
Under Executive Order 129, the head of OPASGP (reported to be former Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr.) will have his own, new office in the Cabinet. He will have the rank of a Cabinet secretary. He will have an undersecretary and an assistant secretary. They will all have their own offices with administrative and technical personnel manning these offices. All these, apart from the ARTA.
It’s impossible to account at this time how much money would be spent on the OPASGP, whose funding shall be sourced from the budget of the Office of the President. But it does seem to be a waste of taxpayers’ money, because it is merely replicating the job of the ARTA.
When ARTA was created by law in 2018, and when it began operating in 2019, it had two mandates: To assist both national government agencies and local government units (LGUs) in streamlining their operations, reengineering their procedures and digitizing their regulatory management systems. And to impose reforms, set deadlines and penalize whole agencies and their officials for non-compliance.
Take a look at some of the functions of the OPASGP, according to the President’s EO, including the following:
To advise and recommend to the President and the ARTA policies, programs, measures, and strategies that will simplify processes and cut red tape in the government;
To undertake, in coordination with the ARTA, the review of existing government systems, mechanisms, and processes, especially the ongoing harmonization of interrelated agency processes in critical sectors.
To provide and set up, in coordination with the ARTA, an effective mechanism to act on special, strategic, and immediate concerns or directives of the President requiring immediate action from relevant government departments, agencies, and offices, LGUs, government-owned or -controlled corporations, and government financial institutions.
To provide policy guidance on all policy concerns submitted by the ARTA to the President, with respect to the implementation of Presidential directives and initiatives, as well as policies, programs, projects, and activities on the ease of doing business under Republic Act (RA) 9485.
To recommend to the ARTA and other appropriate agencies to investigate or pursue appropriate action in case of non-compliance of any government official or employee with RA 9485 as amended and other relevant laws and directives on ease of doing business.
There are more functions listed but almost everything has ARTA mentioned along with it.
Again, it seems obvious that the OPASGP would merely be overseeing ARTA or duplicating what ARTA should be doing in the first place, making one agency or the other redundant.
If the ARTA is doing its job well would there even be a need for an OPASGP?
At a time when the pandemic has added a lot of pressure for the government to make the most out of the national budget—to allocate taxpayer’s money to the sectors that need it most, like health and education—the administration should actually be looking to reduce duplication and increase efficiency in the bureaucracy.
It’s hard to imagine a private company that is losing billions during this pandemic adding more people and more offices, spending more to deliver basically the same results or perform the same functions.
Perhaps it is not out of line for the public sector to be held to the same standard. The government should operate like a well-run company trying to maximize productivity.
We know the President cannot do it alone. He needs his Cabinet and his executive staff in Malacañang to help him run the government and to pursue the priorities of his administration.
But how many agencies does it really take to solve red tape? And how wise is it to try to streamline government processes by adding another layer to the already bloated bureaucracy?
One anti-red tape government agency is enough to deliver significant results, if it truly does the job it was created for by law.