“Convergence in the Delivery of Basic Services”
“Convergence in the Delivery of Basic Services”
By Ramon Ike Villareal Señeres, CESO, CSEE
The terminology for “basic needs” in the Philippines has gone from “eleven basic needs” to “minimum basic needs”, the latter not being specific on the number of needs. In the former terminology, the “eleven basic needs” were listed as food, clothing, shelter, water, health, education, livelihood, power, mobility, sports and recreation and ecological balance.
Moving fast forward to the present times, “clothing” is usually no longer listed as a basic need, probably because of the popularity of second hand clothing stores all over the country. What used to be referred to as “power” is now generally known as “energy”, although it is still interpreted to mean both electricity and fuel, as it was interpreted before. As it was interpreted before, “mobility” meant both transportability and connectivity as it does now, but perhaps not with the increased importance that is now given to the latter.
In the absence of a clear definition of what “basic needs” really are in the terminology of the Philippine government, I am now proposing a new listing of “twelve basic services”, adding some and removing some from the needs listed in the old “eleven basic needs”. I am offering this new listing primarily to the advocacy groups that would agree to adopt my interpretation, but of course I am also hoping that the Philippine government would also adopt the same interpretation.
I am now proposing a new list that would now include education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, recreation, safety, shelter and water, listed alphabetically. I have removed “clothing” from this list, for the same reason that I stated earlier. I have also removed “ecological balance”, but I have made it part of “safety” instead. I have not really removed “livelihood”, because I have split it into two, namely “employment” and “entrepreneurship”. For purposes of simplicity, I have renamed “sports and recreation” to “recreation”. I have kept “power”, but I have renamed it “energy” instead.
In the delivery of basic services, it is very important to have a clearly defined department of government that should take the lead in the delivery process. As I see it, the basic services that do not have clearly defined departmental leads are education, recreation, safety and water. If the scope of education is defined to mean only primary and secondary education, it would be clear that the lead is the Department of Education (DEPED). However, it is generally understood that the scope also includes tertiary education, and that means that the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) should also be part of the process, with one of these two agencies taking the lead.
Fortunately, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) is under the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and that answers the question of which agency should take the lead in technical education. While it is very clear that DOLE is the lead department in the delivery of employment related services, it should be further made clear that the scope of technical education should include all types of training that would make more people employable, including all other skills that graduates may not have acquired in their primary, secondary and tertiary education, as the case may be.
It appears that when the old Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) was organized, the culture function went to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and the sports function went to the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC). Somewhere in between these movements, it seems that the function of recreation was lost in the process. While it could be argued that culture is really educational in nature, there is no argument that it is also recreational in purpose. Moreover, there is also no argument that recreation is more than just sports, because there are many forms of recreation that are not sports oriented.
Since the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) is in charge of all the public safety agencies, it is implied that it should be the lead in the delivery of all safety related services. Perhaps keeping in pace with emerging terminologies in the global arena, the old National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) has been renamed as the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). That is a good move I think, but just like the old NDCC, the new NDRRMC is still under the Department of National Defense (DND), an agency that is supposed to be civilian in nature, but is almost always headed by someone with a military background. While the government has apparently adopted the modern understanding of what Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is, it has not reached the awareness that DRR is really a civilian function that is usually assigned to environmental agencies in most other countries. Add to that the fact that disaster management is also a civilian function in other countries.
In many other countries, Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) is a function that is tied in to DRR. As a matter of fact, CCA and DRR should always go together, and there is no reason why these two should be separated. More often than not the CCA and the DRR functions are assigned to environmental agencies in most countries. Unfortunately here in the Philippines, these twin functions have been split into two, with the CCA function assigned to the new Philippine Climate Change Commission (PCCC) and the DRR function assigned to the DND by way of the NDRRMC.
Perhaps unknown to most of our citizens, the penology function is split between the Bureau of Corrections (BUCOR) under the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) under the DILG. This issue is relevant to our discussion, because jail management is considered as a public safety function in the context of the DILG, along with police protection under the Philippine National Police (PNP) and fire protection under the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), all three agencies being under the DILG.
All told, the process of delivering safety services is now split between the DND, the DILG and the PCCA, without any clarity as to which of them should be the lead, and with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) seemingly out of the picture, even if environmental safety is one of our major national concerns. The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) is also seemingly out of the picture, even if air safety, road safety and maritime safety are also our major concerns.
The National Water Resources Board (NWRB) is chaired by the DENR, thus making it appear at the outset that the DENR is the apparent lead agency in the process of delivering water services. That is not as simple as it seems however, because there are many other participants in the process. Included in the process are the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA), the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS), the Department of Agriculture (DA) through the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Health (DOH). Just in case you are wondering how the DOH got into the picture, the LWUA is now under the DOH by virtue of Executive Order No. 738.
As I understand it, the NWRB is the lead agency in the Philippine water sector, but is seems unclear how it exercises its authority over the LWUA and the MWSS, considering the fact that the NWRB is under the DENR, the LWUA is under the DOH, and the MWSS does not seem to be under any department, apparently a Government Owned and Controlled Corporation (GOCC) that is entirely on its own. It is clear enough however that the jurisdiction of the MWSS is the greater metropolitan area only, while the LWUA has jurisdiction over the rest of the country. As I understand it also, the NWRB appears to be on the production side, while the MWSS and the LWUA are on the distribution side.
It is worthwhile to note that the DPWH has taken the initiative to converge their plans and programs with that of the DA and the DOTC. It appears however that this move for convergence applies only to the flow of water for agricultural and flood control purposes, and not for the delivery of water to the consumer and industrial side. The move of DPWH is a good start, but it is really high time for the government to realize that water is one massive commodity that should be managed in its complete totality, ideally incorporating all the needs for irrigation, flood control, consumer consumption and industrial production.
Convergence is a goal that should not be left to the government to achieve. Given the size of the government bureaucracy and the complexity of the scopes and mandates of its departments, agencies and bureaus, there is objectively a need for the private sector to come in and help in its totality, jointly harnessing all of its components towards the common goal of nation building. In other literature, “national development” is a term that is synonymous to “nation building”. I used to prefer the former term, but I recently realized that “nation building” is a term that is better understood and is more generally accepted by most people.
In order for convergence to be measurable, there has to be a physical setting. The physical setting that I would recommend is the barangay level. In order for it to be measurable, there has to be set standards of measurement, and that is where the physical setting becomes relevant. In the final analysis, there has to be a database that will measure and track the progress of the delivery of services, namely education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, recreation, safety, shelter and water.
There are many ways of defining the components of the private sector. I believe however that the private sector should be also be defined in physical terms meaning the components that could actually participate in the physical delivery of basic services to the barangay level. Given this definition, I believe that the more identifiable components are the business chambers, the civic organizations and the corporate foundations.
In the public sector, the identifiable components are the line departments, the attached agencies and the local governments. In the language of the government, the line bureaus are considered as “organic” and not as “attached”. On the other hand, GOCCs are considered as attached, not unless these are directly under the Office of the President (OP). For purposes of this discussion, the independent commissions may be classified as among the attached agencies.
It is a big challenge to converge the programs and projects of the private sector, but it is an even bigger challenge to converge the programs and projects of the public sector. The biggest challenge of all I think is to bring about the convergence of the public sector and the private sector together as one, moving towards one common direction of nation building at the barangay level.
To add to the dictum that content is king, I say that data is is the determinant. Without good data in the background, there could be no good content. Regardless of their own mandates, all the agencies of government have to produce content both for internal and external purposes. Generally known as “reports”, these are usually translated into final forms such as voice, text or video. The forms could change from one agency to another, but the bottom line is the same, they have to produce the reports, and without good data, they could not produce good reports. This to me is the first point of convergence, to converge the data first.
First things first, there is a need to collect the benchmark data at the barangay level first. The objective of this data gathering stage is find out the present status of the delivery of services at that level, for all the twelve services namely education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, recreation, safety, shelter and water. The method of doing this should be the same, to get the percentage of access to these services, among the households in the target barangay. It is important to note here that the that will be gathered is social in nature, meaning that it should be reflective of the entire household. In other words, it should not be personal in nature, meaning that it should not be based on the individual experiences of the respondents.
The key word of course is “access”, and the question is whether the household has access to each of the twelve services or not. To put it in another way, the question is whether each of these services are within their reach or not. It should be made clear at this point that the focus of the questioning should be on the aspect of “accessibility” or “availability” rather than “affordability” or “ability”. In other words, the intention of the data gathering is to find out whether the households in the target barangay could access each of the twelve services or not, regardless of whether they could afford it or not.
Since “affordability” or “ability” is a function of poverty, there should be follow up questions to find out why the respondents say that they do not have access to certain services. The data derived from these questions will not only give us a reading of how poverty affects accessibility, it will also give us a means to find out what goods and services we should possibly include in, or exclude from the imaginary “basket of goods”, a method that is now being used to measure the incidence of poverty at the household level.
The Corinthian Coffee Clutch (C3) is a weekly forum that I chair, held every Friday at the Elk’s Club inside the Corinthian Plaza Building in Paseo de Roxas, Makati City. In our own small ways, we are working for the convergence of the private sector towards the common goal of nation building. Come and join us.
The author is a broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, political economist and computer technologist. He was formerly Director General of the National Computer Center and Chairman of the National Crime Information System
By Ramon Ike Villareal Señeres, CESO, CSEE
The terminology for “basic needs” in the Philippines has gone from “eleven basic needs” to “minimum basic needs”, the latter not being specific on the number of needs. In the former terminology, the “eleven basic needs” were listed as food, clothing, shelter, water, health, education, livelihood, power, mobility, sports and recreation and ecological balance.
Moving fast forward to the present times, “clothing” is usually no longer listed as a basic need, probably because of the popularity of second hand clothing stores all over the country. What used to be referred to as “power” is now generally known as “energy”, although it is still interpreted to mean both electricity and fuel, as it was interpreted before. As it was interpreted before, “mobility” meant both transportability and connectivity as it does now, but perhaps not with the increased importance that is now given to the latter.
In the absence of a clear definition of what “basic needs” really are in the terminology of the Philippine government, I am now proposing a new listing of “twelve basic services”, adding some and removing some from the needs listed in the old “eleven basic needs”. I am offering this new listing primarily to the advocacy groups that would agree to adopt my interpretation, but of course I am also hoping that the Philippine government would also adopt the same interpretation.
I am now proposing a new list that would now include education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, recreation, safety, shelter and water, listed alphabetically. I have removed “clothing” from this list, for the same reason that I stated earlier. I have also removed “ecological balance”, but I have made it part of “safety” instead. I have not really removed “livelihood”, because I have split it into two, namely “employment” and “entrepreneurship”. For purposes of simplicity, I have renamed “sports and recreation” to “recreation”. I have kept “power”, but I have renamed it “energy” instead.
In the delivery of basic services, it is very important to have a clearly defined department of government that should take the lead in the delivery process. As I see it, the basic services that do not have clearly defined departmental leads are education, recreation, safety and water. If the scope of education is defined to mean only primary and secondary education, it would be clear that the lead is the Department of Education (DEPED). However, it is generally understood that the scope also includes tertiary education, and that means that the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) should also be part of the process, with one of these two agencies taking the lead.
Fortunately, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) is under the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and that answers the question of which agency should take the lead in technical education. While it is very clear that DOLE is the lead department in the delivery of employment related services, it should be further made clear that the scope of technical education should include all types of training that would make more people employable, including all other skills that graduates may not have acquired in their primary, secondary and tertiary education, as the case may be.
It appears that when the old Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) was organized, the culture function went to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and the sports function went to the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC). Somewhere in between these movements, it seems that the function of recreation was lost in the process. While it could be argued that culture is really educational in nature, there is no argument that it is also recreational in purpose. Moreover, there is also no argument that recreation is more than just sports, because there are many forms of recreation that are not sports oriented.
Since the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) is in charge of all the public safety agencies, it is implied that it should be the lead in the delivery of all safety related services. Perhaps keeping in pace with emerging terminologies in the global arena, the old National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) has been renamed as the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). That is a good move I think, but just like the old NDCC, the new NDRRMC is still under the Department of National Defense (DND), an agency that is supposed to be civilian in nature, but is almost always headed by someone with a military background. While the government has apparently adopted the modern understanding of what Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is, it has not reached the awareness that DRR is really a civilian function that is usually assigned to environmental agencies in most other countries. Add to that the fact that disaster management is also a civilian function in other countries.
In many other countries, Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) is a function that is tied in to DRR. As a matter of fact, CCA and DRR should always go together, and there is no reason why these two should be separated. More often than not the CCA and the DRR functions are assigned to environmental agencies in most countries. Unfortunately here in the Philippines, these twin functions have been split into two, with the CCA function assigned to the new Philippine Climate Change Commission (PCCC) and the DRR function assigned to the DND by way of the NDRRMC.
Perhaps unknown to most of our citizens, the penology function is split between the Bureau of Corrections (BUCOR) under the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) under the DILG. This issue is relevant to our discussion, because jail management is considered as a public safety function in the context of the DILG, along with police protection under the Philippine National Police (PNP) and fire protection under the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), all three agencies being under the DILG.
All told, the process of delivering safety services is now split between the DND, the DILG and the PCCA, without any clarity as to which of them should be the lead, and with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) seemingly out of the picture, even if environmental safety is one of our major national concerns. The Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) is also seemingly out of the picture, even if air safety, road safety and maritime safety are also our major concerns.
The National Water Resources Board (NWRB) is chaired by the DENR, thus making it appear at the outset that the DENR is the apparent lead agency in the process of delivering water services. That is not as simple as it seems however, because there are many other participants in the process. Included in the process are the Local Water Utilities Administration (LWUA), the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS), the Department of Agriculture (DA) through the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Health (DOH). Just in case you are wondering how the DOH got into the picture, the LWUA is now under the DOH by virtue of Executive Order No. 738.
As I understand it, the NWRB is the lead agency in the Philippine water sector, but is seems unclear how it exercises its authority over the LWUA and the MWSS, considering the fact that the NWRB is under the DENR, the LWUA is under the DOH, and the MWSS does not seem to be under any department, apparently a Government Owned and Controlled Corporation (GOCC) that is entirely on its own. It is clear enough however that the jurisdiction of the MWSS is the greater metropolitan area only, while the LWUA has jurisdiction over the rest of the country. As I understand it also, the NWRB appears to be on the production side, while the MWSS and the LWUA are on the distribution side.
It is worthwhile to note that the DPWH has taken the initiative to converge their plans and programs with that of the DA and the DOTC. It appears however that this move for convergence applies only to the flow of water for agricultural and flood control purposes, and not for the delivery of water to the consumer and industrial side. The move of DPWH is a good start, but it is really high time for the government to realize that water is one massive commodity that should be managed in its complete totality, ideally incorporating all the needs for irrigation, flood control, consumer consumption and industrial production.
Convergence is a goal that should not be left to the government to achieve. Given the size of the government bureaucracy and the complexity of the scopes and mandates of its departments, agencies and bureaus, there is objectively a need for the private sector to come in and help in its totality, jointly harnessing all of its components towards the common goal of nation building. In other literature, “national development” is a term that is synonymous to “nation building”. I used to prefer the former term, but I recently realized that “nation building” is a term that is better understood and is more generally accepted by most people.
In order for convergence to be measurable, there has to be a physical setting. The physical setting that I would recommend is the barangay level. In order for it to be measurable, there has to be set standards of measurement, and that is where the physical setting becomes relevant. In the final analysis, there has to be a database that will measure and track the progress of the delivery of services, namely education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, recreation, safety, shelter and water.
There are many ways of defining the components of the private sector. I believe however that the private sector should be also be defined in physical terms meaning the components that could actually participate in the physical delivery of basic services to the barangay level. Given this definition, I believe that the more identifiable components are the business chambers, the civic organizations and the corporate foundations.
In the public sector, the identifiable components are the line departments, the attached agencies and the local governments. In the language of the government, the line bureaus are considered as “organic” and not as “attached”. On the other hand, GOCCs are considered as attached, not unless these are directly under the Office of the President (OP). For purposes of this discussion, the independent commissions may be classified as among the attached agencies.
It is a big challenge to converge the programs and projects of the private sector, but it is an even bigger challenge to converge the programs and projects of the public sector. The biggest challenge of all I think is to bring about the convergence of the public sector and the private sector together as one, moving towards one common direction of nation building at the barangay level.
To add to the dictum that content is king, I say that data is is the determinant. Without good data in the background, there could be no good content. Regardless of their own mandates, all the agencies of government have to produce content both for internal and external purposes. Generally known as “reports”, these are usually translated into final forms such as voice, text or video. The forms could change from one agency to another, but the bottom line is the same, they have to produce the reports, and without good data, they could not produce good reports. This to me is the first point of convergence, to converge the data first.
First things first, there is a need to collect the benchmark data at the barangay level first. The objective of this data gathering stage is find out the present status of the delivery of services at that level, for all the twelve services namely education, employment, energy, entrepreneurship, food, justice, health, mobility, recreation, safety, shelter and water. The method of doing this should be the same, to get the percentage of access to these services, among the households in the target barangay. It is important to note here that the that will be gathered is social in nature, meaning that it should be reflective of the entire household. In other words, it should not be personal in nature, meaning that it should not be based on the individual experiences of the respondents.
The key word of course is “access”, and the question is whether the household has access to each of the twelve services or not. To put it in another way, the question is whether each of these services are within their reach or not. It should be made clear at this point that the focus of the questioning should be on the aspect of “accessibility” or “availability” rather than “affordability” or “ability”. In other words, the intention of the data gathering is to find out whether the households in the target barangay could access each of the twelve services or not, regardless of whether they could afford it or not.
Since “affordability” or “ability” is a function of poverty, there should be follow up questions to find out why the respondents say that they do not have access to certain services. The data derived from these questions will not only give us a reading of how poverty affects accessibility, it will also give us a means to find out what goods and services we should possibly include in, or exclude from the imaginary “basket of goods”, a method that is now being used to measure the incidence of poverty at the household level.
The Corinthian Coffee Clutch (C3) is a weekly forum that I chair, held every Friday at the Elk’s Club inside the Corinthian Plaza Building in Paseo de Roxas, Makati City. In our own small ways, we are working for the convergence of the private sector towards the common goal of nation building. Come and join us.
The author is a broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, political economist and computer technologist. He was formerly Director General of the National Computer Center and Chairman of the National Crime Information System
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