Open Local Legislative Processes (PH0055)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address?: In the current local legislative process, the citizens can only provide feedback or comments on limited ordinances through public hearing. This results to most people being unaware of the ordinances passed in the Saggunian, excluding them in the decision-making process of the Sanggunian. If there are public hearings conducted for the passing of an ordinance, a limited few attends the public hearing due to lack of interest and/or the inaccessibility of the venue for the public hearing. This leads to low citizen participation in the creation of legislations. In addition, although CSOs are members of the local special bodies, their participation in the legislation process is also very limited. Looking at the current context of the local legislation process, it can be observed that there is low citizen participation due to lack of interest, inaccessibility of the public hearings for the ordinances and inadvertent exclusion of some citizens.; What is the commitment?: The commitment aims to create more spaces for citizen engagement to further improve the local legislative process.; How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?: A highly accessible and transparent local government through open legislative processes will increase the citizens’ participation through public awareness and spaces for engagement between the public and the government.; Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?: This alternative process will supplement the current offline legislative events such as committee hearings and public assemblies. Leveraging technology through an online platform, specifically through social media, the citizen’s interest on legislation will improve and in effect improving the citizen’s participation. Social media, such as Facebook, is a more accessible medium for the citizens as most citizens have active Facebook accounts. Inclusion of citizens in the process of legislation shall open up opportunities for engagement and effectively improve legislations passed. Elected officials will also be well informed of the people’s ideas and reactions.

11. Institutionalize Open Local Legislative Processes (Open Legislation Platform through Social Media and Website)

Commitment text from action plan:

“The commitment aims to create more spaces for engagement to further improve the local legislative process, specifically creation of an online platform.”

Milestones: ^[153]

1. "Draft and pass a resolution authorizing the Office of the Secretary to the Sanggunian to explore mechanisms for open legislation subject to guidelines to be approved by the Sanggunian and the local chief executive.
2. Launch of the official Facebook account of the Sanggunian as the platform for open legislation (provide a link of the Sanggunian official website in the Facebook account)
3. Identify and engage the CSO counterpart to verify the citizens who engage in the online legislative process.
4. Posting of proposed and draft ordinances for information and comments. Enabling the poll and comment features
5. Designate a committee to review the feedback provided by the citizens. If necessary or if there is clamor from the public, the information gathered may be used as discussion points for the legislation to be passed.
6. Publish report on the review and assessment of the applicability of social media platform for Open Legislation"

Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see Philippines’ action plan at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Philippines_-Action-Plan_2017-2019_updated.pdf

Context and Objectives (Commitment Design)

The commitment aimed to improve the local legislative process by creating spaces for engagement of citizens, primarily through the social media platform Facebook. The effective use of this space was expected to trigger citizen participation in local legislative processes—including through the use of polls and comments functionalities—which in turn would make policies more responsive to the needs of citizens.

This process was expected to be particularly crucial for citizens who resided in rural areas, where local government centers are not easy to access. ^[154] Six local government units signed up to participate in the implementation of this commitment: these include the provinces of Bohol, Surigao del Norte and Albay, and the municipalities of Trinidad, Alicia, and Tubigon in Bohol. All these localities have already used digital technologies to open up their legislation mainly through social media and websites. The commitment was relevant to the OGP values of access to information, civic participation, and the use of technology to promote transparency.

The legislature, including at the local level, is viewed as the cornerstone of a democratic system, as it houses the representatives of the people who act collectively to develop laws that are binding to all and are the key to the functioning of a political order. In the Philippines, however, the legislature, both at the national and local levels, is widely perceived as weak, and law-making does not always embody the will of the people but rather reflects the interests of a few. ^[155] While several civil society groups have engaged the legislature on proposed laws and policies, this advocacy is concentrated at the national level, and participation of ordinary citizens in lawmaking is almost nonexistent. Given this situation, bringing lawmaking closer to the people by making pertinent information available, and facilitating citizen participation in related processes, stood to be a progressive agenda that would strengthen lawmaking and support democratic processes.

The commitment included a long list of activities and outputs that were generally specific enough to be verified. However, the precise nature of information to be made available online could have been more specific. If fully implemented as written, this commitment was expected to have minor potential impact. The commitment aimed to address a central gap in access to information on proposed local policies and on the development of local legislation and reinforced online channels for citizen engagement.

As noted above, preceding this action plan, transparency and participation in the development of legislation was rare, despite some local governments having made similar efforts and a national directive to make local government information more accessible. ^[156] Although this commitment represented a positive change from this status quo, it remained limited in terms of specificity and scope. The commitment’s design seemed to assume that enabling online space for citizen feedback and publishing information would on its own generate more engagement and did not include an awareness-raising strategy or activities to promote citizen engagement. In addition, highlighting the limited scope, only three of the Philippines’ 81 provinces would be affected by the commitment, thus excluding most local governments.

Commitment Implementation

This commitment’s implementation was substantial at the end of the implementation period. According to government’s end-of-term self-assessment report, ^[157] all of the targeted provincial governments (Albay, Bohol, and Surigao del Norte) and the three municipalities (Alicia, Tubigon, and Trinidad) completed most milestones, except the milestone on “publishing reports on the review and assessment of the applicability of social media platform for Open Legislation.” Most milestones are related to the creation of a legal and regulatory framework or the passing of internal administrative decisions that would support open legislation in the provinces and municipalities concerned.

The government’s end-of-term report does not provide specific links or evidence of the actual level of information released through the proposed activities. The first activity of the commitment, ^[158] the creation of Facebook accounts for each of the Sangguniang (legislative bodies) involved, ^[159] purposely aimed to bolster access to information and citizen engagement in provincial and local policy making. A review of those Facebook accounts shows information being released, but this did not constitute a significant improvement in the quality of information or amount of information disclosed. For instance, the account of Sangguniang Panlalawigan ng Albay - 13^th publishes information about the passing of legislation but does not include key functionalities like surveys and comments, ^[160] as originally proposed under the commitment. The BOHOL - Sangguniang Panlalawigan (Open Legislation) Facebook group is a private group of around 900 people, restricted to Bohol residents. ^[161] This evidence also suggests that while a channel was created to engage citizens, its limited scope and barriers to entry meant that it did not contribute to more significant changes to government practice toward civic participation.

Other outreach techniques have also been used, such as radio programs (Surigao del Norte) and civil society committees (Municipality of Tubigon, Bohol province), which contribute positive changes in government practices. Beyond establishing the channels and creating opportunities, how these efforts have been used concretely to improve legislative decision-making at the local level is yet to be seen.

Next steps

The IRM shared the following recommendations with stakeholders during the prepublication review period for the design section of this report. They are included below for public record. ^[162]

The IRM researcher suggests that future efforts in this policy area reexamine the assumption that making any information accessible online will automatically lead to citizen awareness and participation and then to improved policies. Strategies to ensure citizen uptake, citizen engagement, and government response need to be added in the design.

• Future commitments in this area could also include a process by which successful practices (if any) can be identified and shared to other local governments or aim to expand their adoption nationwide, if deemed successful. It is also advisable to establish the baseline to track improvements on opening up the local legislature. A successful model at the local level can also aim to inspire the national legislature.

The IRM recommends designing future commitments’ milestones in a way that they are outcome-oriented.