Scaling Up Implementation of Freedom of Information Program (PH0067)

Brief Description of the Commitment

The commitment aims to rebuild and scale-up the momentum of the implementation of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Program by intensifying the localization and adoption of the FOI Program across local governments in the Philippines and institutionalizing and digitalizing the citizen’s access to public information across branches of government and non-government sectors.

Problem Definition

1. What problem does the commitment aim to address? The fight for the passage of the FOI Law in the Philippines has already been more than 3-decades long, but to no avail, the FOI Bill remains pending in Congress. Similarly, the FOI Program had gone through three (3) NAP cycles as a commitment. While substantial results and achievements were unlocked in the course of the implementation, having the FOI Bill passed into law remains unsuccessful. Despite and amidst these abject turn of events in the access to information landscape, the Freedom of Information-Program Management (FOI-PMO), under the Presidential Communications Office (PCO), persists in recalibrating strategies to ensure that the FOI Practice thrives and advances in the Philippine bureaucracy. Elevating the FOI Program implementation under the 6th NAP Cycle, this commitment addresses the bureaucratic inertia and plateau of both local and national FOI movement in the country by rebuilding on the already-established undertakings of the FOI Program, and scaling up on the momentum of the implementation of the localized FOI Program under the new administration. Within this ambit, the commitment carries on the goal of streamlining platforms for access to government information from various government agencies and offices for a proactive, reactive, timely, relevant, and accurate disclosure of information to the public and intensifying engagements with local government units (LGUs) for the localization and adoption of the FOI Program nationwide. Despite the issuance of the Duterte Administration of Executive Order No. 2, s. 2016 or the FOI Program, the issued PCOO-DILG Joint Memorandum Circular 2018-01, the significant results and impact achieved in the 5th NAP Cycle (2019-2021), and the unwavering support and lobbying of FOI allies and partners, there is still a need to aggressively regain and reinvigorate the thrust of the FOI campaign not only at the national level but most importantly at the local level. This will only be achieved by reinstitutionalizing the program across the supply and demand spaces in the government, non-government, and public sectors, restrengthening inclusive and expansive localization efforts to help support demand for more granular information down to the grassroots and local level of government, redeveloping digital governance through digitalization of information and data disclosure, and revitalizing civic participation. Mirroring this challenge in the public’s access to information, the commitment is also bridging the gap of inclusively providing information across and within gender intersectionalities and multi-sectoral groups most especially the disenfranchised and the marginalized sectors who are barely tapped by the government and have limited to lack of capacity in engaging with the government sectors to request necessary information. Implemented since 2016, the FOI Program continues to battle against the rampant prevalence of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and fake news, circulating in both offline and online information platforms. Similarly the program provides an avenue for the citizens to share feedback regarding the information disclosure mechanisms of the government. Thus, the program actively and directly combats corruption thereby promoting transparency, accountability, and civic engagement in government processes. All this supports the constitutionally mandated right of the people to access public information as stipulated in Section 28, Article II and Section 7, Article III of the 1987 Philippine Constitution which serves as the backbone of stimulating and championing citizen’s participation in public governance, exercising the right to information and shaping public decisions affecting matters of public interest. Given this, this commitment aims to overcome bureaucratic inertia and the stagnation observed in the local and national FOI movement in the country. It does so by revitalizing the legitimacy and pre-existing initiatives of the FOI Program, and leveraging the momentum generated during the implementation of the program throughout the years since 2016 through aggressive localization and adoption of the program practice across the country.

2. What are the causes of the problem? The ultimate factor of this major problem is that the passage of the FOI Law has not been identified as a priority nor an urgent legislative measure in the previous congress and past administrations. This challenge in the legislation posits debacles on lack of political buy-in among legislators and local FOI champions. As underlying factors, the transition of the country under a new administration contributed to the shift of priority programs, leaving the FOI movement at the sidelines both at the national and local level. To add, the FOIPMO, which is the designated office that oversees the implementation of the FOI Program has undergone several physical office transitions from then Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) to Philippine Information Agency (PIA) by virtue of Executive Order No. 02, s. 2022, then back again under the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) by virtue of Executive Order No. 16, s. 2023. This office transition resulted in delayed transfer of budgets which then resulted in impeded activity implementation in various facets of the FOI Program. Undeniably, the change of FOI champions in various national government offices and local governments inflicted as well the dynamics of FOI implementation as numerous FOI officers, who are in charge of facilitating FOI requests, were replaced or removed. This further aggravated the institutionalization of FOI across the bureaucracy. In view also of this political temperament after the 2022 national elections, a number of staunch and dedicated FOI champions, partners, and allies, from a multitude of sectors, who campaigned aggressively for FOI Law, have inevitably grown tired into what is described as “advocacy fatigue” seeing that there was no concrete progress in the FOI lobbying despite the progressive engagements being spearheaded by FOI-PMO all throughout the years. This lack of an all-encompassing FOI law hinders the establishment of more open, transparent, and accountable governance by limiting the public’s access to public records, data, and other relevant information, and impeding the growth of community of practice and champions. As such, it is only worth noting that this commitment is designed to address bureaucratic inertia and the perceived status quo within the realm of FOI movement in the country by reinvigorating the campaign for more and wide localization of the FOI Program, reviving the pressure on the passage of the FOI Law, and restimulating the credibility and existing initiatives on access to information, while capitalizing on the momentum built during the program’s implementation since 2016.

Commitment description

1. What has been done so far to solve the problem? As of this writing, the FOI-PMO has successfully carried out the following activities in support of the FOI Program, and in concurrence with the commitment to pass the FOI Law and localize the FOI Program. The achievements are clustered according to outcome areas:

Proactive Disclosure of Information (Transparency) 1. Continuous onboarding of agencies to the Electronic FOI (eFOI) Portal which enabled other government agencies and local governments to take part and promote proactive disclosure of information. As of writing, a total of five hundred ninety (590) government agencies have been boarded in the portal, which is about 97% significant increase of onboarded agencies from 2017.

Timely and Responsive Disclosure of Information (Transparency) 1. Consistently improving information dissemination processes and practices through enhanced implementation and key features of the eFOI Portal. As of now, a number of Artificial Intelligence (AI)- based improvements have been deployed in the portal including the (a) Agency Recommender System which matches information requests with the top agencies that holds FOI user’s requested information, (b) Automated Personally Identifiable Information Redactor (APIIR) which detects and removes sensitive information of the FOI users in the information requests, and the Topical and Thematic Modeling of Information Requests (TMI) which optimizes the portal’s search engine and retrieval of information by processing, analyzing, and producing trends analysis through thematic modeling techniques. These advancements in the portal intended to increase the platform’s usability and efficiency in enabling the citizens to openly access government information.

Passage of FOI Law (Accountability, Transparency) 1. Drafted an administration version of the FOI Bill and lobbied to FOI Champions in congress. The draft administration FOI Bill was submitted to FOI Champions and a total of forty-six (46) lobbying and legislative engagements with the Congress were conducted and facilitated. As of writing, the FOI-PMO revived contacts and engagements with select offices and initially established connections in order to reintroduce the strength and essence of the FOI Program and the need for the passage of the FOI Law. 2. Requested the certification of the FOI as an urgent legislative agenda by the Office of the President (OP) or the inclusion of the FOI as a part of the President’s Legislative Agenda. However, the previous congress neither prioritized the FOI Bill as an urgent legislative measure nor has it submitted a committee report recommending the approval and issuance of a consolidated or substitute bill on FOI. As of writing, the FOI-PMO re-established connections with the OP in order to make the FOI Program a part of the legislative agenda under the new administration.

Localization of the FOI Program (Accountability) 1. To complement the localization efforts, FOI-PMO also banked on proactive capacity-building and consultation activities with LGUs and local government champions. A total of thirty (30) local engagements were facilitated. As of this writing, the number also of LGUs that have enacted FOI Ordinances in their respective localities significantly increased from only sixty-three (63) in 2022 to seventy-four (74).

Bureaucracy (Accountability) 1. Increased participation and presence in international fora. FOI-PMO has been consistently recognized by international organizations in relation to its access to information and open data initiatives in order to apply best global practices on access to information worldwide. Just recently, the FOI-PMO, as the first country in Asia to become a member of the International Conference of Information Commissioners (ICIC), successfully held the 14th edition of the ICIC which gathered eighty (80) Information Commissioners around the world. The ICIC is an international organization and network of Information Commissioners and Ombudspersons and other right to information (RTI) bodies which seeks to promote and protect the implementation of access to information laws to improve the public’s right to access information and build and share knowledge and best practices on transparency and accountability globally. This momentum gave the FOI-PMO the opportunity to showcase in the international space the remarkable strength of the FOI practice in the country despite the little to lack of support for the passage of FOI Law in the country.

Public Use and Relevance of the FOI Program (Participation) 1. Conducted thirty (30) public consultations activities and strengthened capacity development activities with and for FOI key stakeholders to elicit feedback on the implementation of the FOI Program and the FOI Bill. As of this writing, the FOI-PMO further improved the feedback gathering on FOI through the Client Satisfaction Survey/Feedback Mechanism. Through this, the citizens are given the appropriate means to relay and report its concerns on any issues they may encounter in lodging FOI requests. 2. FOI Program activities have been inclusive in nature. FOI-PMO ensured the participation and empowerment of various marginalized and disenfranchised sectors to access information, thus, giving premium to the multi-sectoral approach of capacity-building. As of this writing, FOI-PMO has been rolling out numerous engagements with various sectors such as FOI Bridging Program, CSO Hangouts, FOI Summit, FOI Talks, among others. Through these engagements FOI-PMO have capacitated sectors such as Persons Deprived of Liberty (PDL), Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), Senior Citizens, Indigenous Peoples (IPs), LGBTQIA+, Women, Youth, Business groups, and etc. Under this commitment more sectors will be tapped and engaged with such as the farmers, fisherfolks, urban poor, formal and information labor workers, children, and cooperatives among others.

In light of this, despite the remarkable progress and developments achieved by the FOI Program implementation in the previous NAP Cycle, the FOI Program commitment under the 6th NAP Cycle remains vital and pivotal in rebuilding, sustaining, and tighten up the fulcrum of access to information practice and momentum to combat bureaucratic inertia and plateau on the FOI movement and campaign in the Philippines.

2. What solution are you proposing? While the passage of the FOI Law is the ultimate and ambitious goal of this commitment which will mandate the disclosure of government information and streamline access to information platforms across all sectors, it is still imperative to set the realistic political landscape of the country under a newly transitioned government from the Duterte Administration to the Marcos Administration in which prioritization of the FOI Program is not seen as a primary legislative and local agenda. With this, it should be noted that the administration and local governments’ support are beyond elemental in localizing the FOI Program and expediting the passage of an FOI Law. The FOI-PMO will rebuild and level up on implementing its recalibrated existing programs, activities, and projects, through aggressive lobbying for the adoption of the local FOI Ordinances/Executive Orders and other critical measures supporting the implementation of the said program. Furthermore, the commitment fosters greater innovation with the application of the AI-powered programs to help in localizing and digitalizing the FOI Program while also integrating feedback mechanisms to ensure citizencentric agenda of the FOI Program in the country. Thus, the following FOI practices and activities clustered according to outcome area shall be re-enrolled to suffice the commitment:

Proactive Disclosure of Information (Transparency) 1. Increase the number of onboarded agencies to the eFOI Portal to promote proactive disclosure of information from five hundred ninety (590) to nine hundred thirty-two (932). 2. Increase the number of records and consolidated Agency Information Inventory (AII).

Timely and Responsive Disclosure of Information (Transparency) 1. Digitalize access to information through enhanced application and features of the eFOI Portal. More AIpowered applications are to be deployed to increase the platform’s usability and efficiency in enabling the citizens to openly access government information. 2. Enhance capacity development engagements and deepen knowledge sharing among FOI Officers in facilitating FOI requests. 3. Increase the number of FOI Officers onboarded and designated across government agencies. 4. Increase the success rate in processing requests in the eFOI portal from 58% to 61%. 5. Decrease the number of average working days processing time of FOI requests from seven (7) to four (4).

Passage of FOI Law (Accountability, Transparency) 1. Aggressively reintroduce the administration version of the FOI Bill in Congress and revive contacts and engagements with select offices to spotlight strength of the FOI Program and the pressure to pass the FOI Law in the country. 2. Re-establish connections and engagements with the OP to reintegrate the FOI Program as a part of the legislative agenda under the Marcos Administration.

Localization of the FOI Program (Accountability) 1. Proactively reintroduce the FOI Program to localize adoption of FOI Ordinances in the local government units nationwide. 2. Increase the number of passed and implemented FOI Ordinances versus the total number of LGUs in the Philippines 3. Enhance capacity development engagements and deepen knowledge sharing among local FOI Officers in facilitating FOI requests. 4. Increase embeddedness of FOI in local government processes.

Bureaucracy (Accountability) 1. Reconsolidate key stakeholders to target FOI Champions in the government and non-government sectors. 2. Enhance research and development (R&D) approach on FOI to continue proactive monitoring and evaluation of the FOI Program implementation both at the national and local levels. 3. Increase participation and presence in international fora and conference to consistently adopt global best FOI Practices. 4. Increase the number of FOI Manuals compliance.

Public Use and Relevance of the FOI Program (Participation) 1. Aggressively and proactively campaign for the inclusion of the FOI Program to the CSOs Agenda. These CSOs Agenda is the advocacy/causes campaign of the partner CSOs. 2. Strengthened conduct of nationwide Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) capacitydevelopment engagements across and between gender intersectionalities, basic sectors, and target stakeholders. 3. Improve citizen feedback mechanism through stakeholders consultation and public/online survey. Through this, the citizens are given the appropriate means to relay and report its concerns on any issues they may encounter in lodging FOI requests via the improved Client Satisfaction Survey/Feedback. 4. Increase eFOI users registered nationwide.

3. What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment? Ultimately, the overarching aim of this commitment is the ambitious nationwide adoption of the FOI Program at all LGU levels and the passage of the FOI Law, both critical and transformative goals requiring mandatory government information disclosure and streamlined access across sectors; however, it is still essential to acknowledge the pragmatic political environment and temperament. This is particularly crucial in the context of the recent transition from the Duterte Administration to the Marcos Administration. In this political landscape, it is imperative to recognize that various LGUs have only just begun with its local development plans (LDPs) and certification of the FOI Law's passage is not currently prioritized on the legislative agenda, nor has it received urgent certification in the previous congress. Nevertheless, the commitment still anchors on the target results to be achieved in the four-year implementation of the 6th NAP Cycle:

Proactive Disclosure of Information (Transparency) 1. Number of onboarded agencies to the eFOI Portal to promote proactive disclosure of information increased from five hundred ninety (590) to nine hundred thirty-two (932). 2. Number of records and consolidated Agency Information Inventory increased

Timely and Responsive Disclosure of Information (Transparency) 1. Access to information digitalized through enhanced application and features of the eFOI Portal. More AI-powered applications deployed to increase the platform’s usability and efficiency in enabling the citizens to openly access government information. 2. Capacity development engagements enhanced and knowledge sharing among national FOI Officers in facilitating FOI requests deepened. 3. Number of FOI Officers onboarded and designated across government agencies increased. 4. Success rate in processing requests in the eFOI portal increased from 58% to 61%. 5. Number of average working days processing time of FOI requests decreased from seven (7) to four (4).

Passage of FOI Law (Accountability, Transparency) 1. Administration version of the FOI Bill in Congress aggressively reintroduced and contacts and engagements with select offices revived to spotlight strength of the FOI Program and the pressure to pass the FOI Law in the country. 2. Connections and engagements with the OP re-established and sustained to reintegrate the FOI Program as a part of the legislative agenda under the Marcos Administration.

Localization of the FOI Program (Accountability) 1. FOI Program proactively reintroduced to localize adoption of FOI Ordinances in the local government units nationwide. 2. Number of passed and implemented FOI Ordinances increased. 3. Capacity development engagements enhanced and knowledge sharing among local FOI Officers in facilitating FOI requests deepened. 4. Embeddedness of FOI in local government processes increased.

Bureaucracy (Accountability) 1. Key stakeholders and FOI Champions in the government and non-government sectors re-consolidated. 2. Research and development (R&D) approach on FOI enhanced to continue proactive monitoring and evaluation of the FOI Program implementation both at the national and local levels. 3. Participation and presence in international fora and conference increased and recognized meaningfully to consistently adopt global best FOI Practices. 4. Number of FOI Manuals compliance increased.

Public Use and Relevance of the FOI Program (Participation) 1. Aggressively and proactively campaign for the inclusion of the FOI Program to the CSOs Agenda. These CSOs Agenda is the advocacy/causes campaign of the partner CSOs. 2. Conduct of nationwide Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) capacity-development engagements across and between gender intersectionalities, basic sectors, and target stakeholders increased and improved. 3. Citizen feedback mechanism through stakeholders consultation and public/online survey enhanced. Through this, the citizens are given the appropriate means to relay and report its concerns on any issues they may encounter in lodging FOI requests via the improved Client Satisfaction Survey/Feedback. 4. eFOI users registered nationwide increased.

Additional Information

1. The passage of the FOI Law and the localization of the FOI Program significantly contribute to and are aligned with the Marcos Administration’s good governance agenda as espoused through the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2023-2028 under Chapter 14: Practice Good Governance and Improve Bureaucratic Efficiency of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). 2. Localization and adoption of the FOI Program are reiterated through PCOO-DILG Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) 2018-01. 3. The FOI Program is inherently supported in the enactment of seventy (76) FOI Ordinances implemented nationwide. 4. Public access to information is under the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Indicator 16.10.2. 5. The total approved budget for 2023 is PHP 34,163,000.00.

Commitment Analysis

1. How will the commitment promote transparency? Transparency in this commitment is promoted through scaled up proactive, timely, and responsive disclosure of information of the bureaucracy including the national and local government units. In here, transparency is illuminated by increasing the number of onboarded agencies to the eFOI Portal, increasing the number of records and consolidated Agency Information Inventory disclosed to the public, increasing the number of FOI Officers capacitated to facilitate FOI requests, increasing the number of success rate in processing requests, and decreasing the number of average working days in processing information requests. With this, the FOI commitment promotes transparency by upholding greater awareness of the public, enabling and empowering the citizenry to request and ask for national and local public information; and enabling the government offices to disclose public information to the citizens. This ensures that the government is committed to delivering public service and cascading the information needs of the public thereby stimulating even more public participation, citizen engagement, and accountability.

2. How will the commitment help foster accountability? Accountability in this commitment is fostered through the localization of the FOI Program and passage of the FOI Law and all the activities implemented that fall under this in order to achieve the ultimate goal of a localized FOI implementation. With the FOI Program being reintroduced to FOI Champions and legislators, more national and local bureaucratic officials would be held accountable in disclosing public and government information to the citizens. The FOI would regain support at the national level; while the FOI Ordinance would exponentially increase, thereby producing proof of concepts, success models, and success stories that FOI works despite some gridlocks in the bureaucracy. With this, the goal to have the FOI Program localized and nationalized fosters greater accountability by ensuring that national government agencies and local government units comply with disclosing timely, relevant, and accurate information that are critical to the public interest. The FOI Program will support transparent and equal monitoring and evaluation systems by validating stricter compliance of government agencies, providing the public with access to the information and platforms necessary to assess and give feedback on the effectiveness of the government agencies’ proactive and reactive information disclosure processes, including implementation of its programs, projects, and other public services.

3. How will the commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing, and monitoring solutions? Participation in this commitment is improved by elevating the public use, feedback mechanism, and legitimacy of the FOI Program to the general public, FOI users, FOI allies and supporters, and FOI champions, and having people-centric dialogues and consultations for feedback gathering. With the FOI Program reintroduced to various stakeholders, the relevance of the FOI Practice is revived and renewed in such a way that more CSOs would adopt the community of practice of access to information, increased FOI users are capacitated and registered nationwide, and the citizen are further empowered to provide feedback through the improved client satisfaction survey and appeals mechanism. With this, the goal to improve citizen participation is magnified through their increased ability to openly and regularly provide feedback, raise concerns and ideas, and participate in defining, implementing, and comonitoring solutions through a developed participatory approach such as the FOI citizen engagement feedback tracker/mechanism which involves public consultations, public and online surveys, and hosting of stakeholders meetings enabling the citizens to inform the government regarding critical technical feedback on the general implementation of the FOI Program and the commitment milestones activities including but not limited to the significant improvements, challenges encountered, and proposed resolutions. Finally, tapped and engaged social sectors would increase and deepen including the 14 basic sectors according to NAPC.

See action plan for commitment milestones and expected outputs.

Action Plan Review

Commitment 1. Localizing freedom of information

Presidential Communications Office’s Freedom of Information Program Management Office (PCO-FOI-PMO), Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), Youth Alliance for Freedom of Information (YAFOI), and Makati Business Club (MBC).

For a complete description, see Commitment 1 in the Philippines’ 2023–2027 action plan.

Context and objectives

This commitment is a continuation and recalibration of efforts to pass legislation on freedom of information (FOI) that have spanned all the Philippines’ OGP action plans. [1] Beyond the OGP process, attempts to pass the bill in parliament have stalled since 1987. The government’s first FOI directive was issued in 2016, [2] providing for public disclosure from the executive branch—albeit with major exceptions. [3] During the previous action plan, local government units began their first concerted effort to pass FOI ordinances. This commitment aims to rebuild and scale up the momentum of the implementation of the FOI program by intensifying its localization. While advocacy and lobbying for the passage of a comprehensive national FOI Law is still included, there is more emphasis on pushing for the passage of local FOI ordinances and a local FOI ordinance handbook, developing a monitoring framework for their implementation in different local government units, improving the centralized FOI portal, and embedding FOI practices in national and local government processes.

During co-creation, balancing opportunities to institutionalize FOI at the local level proved to be challenging, with pressure from civil society advocates to focus on the passage of a national FOI Law. [4] The PH-OGP Steering Committee opened consultations to the 14 basic sectors identified by the National Anti-Poverty Commission, allowing the commitment holder—the Presidential Communications Office’s Freedom of Information Project Management Office (PCO-FOI-PMO)—to broaden engagement with CSOs. [5] Stakeholders recommendations were incorporated into the commitment, reflected in its efforts to make the e-FOI portal more accessible to persons with disabilities, include e-FOI performance analytics in the government dashboard (e.g., number of requests accepted, denied, and pending requests), use AI technology to redesign the portal and increase its efficiencies, and most importantly, adopt a two-pronged approach that consolidates advocacy efforts toward the localization of the FOI program while stakeholders continue lobbying the passage of the FOI Law. [6] The commitment holders did not consult many local government units, which would be beneficial for future co-creation processes.

Potential for results: Modest

Overall, the commitment focuses on a fundamental need to strengthen the Philippines’ FOI regime. It could make progress on local ordinances, as well as the implementation framework, attitude of government institutions, and public awareness. However, its modest targets do not reflect the longer four-year implementation time frame and could go further to address existing policy gaps in public access to information.

The commitment includes several milestones on the e-FOI portal, although these may not be sufficient to address key gaps in FOI policy and enforcement. It aims to onboard 932 government institutions to the e-FOI portal and conduct 200 orientation trainings and 100 consultation meetings on FOI policies (Milestone 1). These activities would contribute to other targets, such as enriching the e-FOI portal capability with AI technologies (Milestone 2), improving the client satisfaction survey mechanism (Milestone 3), and facilitating the exchange of knowledge and best practices (Milestone 9). These milestones could improve user experience and processing time but do not fully take advantage of the four-year implementation period as the e-FOI portal had already onboarded 590 institutions, and the targets of reducing FOI request processing time (from 7 to 4 days) and increasing success rate (from 58% to 61%) represent marginal ambition. The commitment holder described the planned improvement to the client satisfaction survey as simply adding an open-ended prompt to collect qualitative feedback from end users. [7]

The commitment also includes a milestone to pass the FOI Law (Milestone 4). If successful, this legislation could offer more structural solutions. In the absence of this legislation, administrations have made increasing attempts to block public scrutiny of documents such as officials’ Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth, anomalous government transactions, and contentious state programs and projects. [8] For the executive, exceptions to the FOI directive were updated in 2021 [9] and 2023 [10] to exclude certain categories of information, as well as any “other exceptions to the right to information under laws, jurisprudence, and rules and regulations”—which has been described by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility as a “‘catch-all’ of all other limitations” that “reduced the state of access to square one.” [11] In recent years, FOI requests have frequently been denied for administrative reasons, and government agencies have begun to pivot away from proactive disclosure to releasing information only in response to FOI requests. [12] Legislation could potentially address these problems, but the commitment does not specify a new strategy for how the political administration would achieve passage in parliament against the backdrop of a 30-year legislative limbo.

Instead, the commitment seems to be designed for stakeholders to adopt alternative pathways toward FOI reforms. Three milestones pursue a bottom-up approach in which key political actors (Milestone 7) and CSOs (Milestone 10) are expected to champion FOI reform while it is embedded across all government processes (Milestone 8). The commitment also continues efforts to facilitate the issuance of FOI ordinances at the local level (Milestones 5 and 6). This approach builds on the success of the previous action plan, which recognized the need to institutionalize FOI at the subnational level in the absence of a comprehensive FOI Law—with 74 local ordinances passed by 2023. [13] The aim of establishing a framework to monitor and evaluate the implementation of local ordinances follows a key IRM recommendation from the previous cycle. [14] However, the target of 260 new ordinances across four years represents a marginal increase in a country with 120 primary local government units, 110 component cities, 1,486 municipalities, and 42,027 bureaus of local government units. Moreover, the commitment does not specify the targeted administration levels (i.e., barangay, municipal, or provincial).

Civil society stakeholders have also expressed mixed feelings toward this strategic shift, although the approach emerged from a diverse consultation process. The Youth Alliance for Freedom of Information noted that the commitment had already been finalized by the government prior to consultations, therefore limiting their ability to influence the focus and ambition level. While they remain committed to advocating for FOI rights, the alliance expressed plans to implement their own FOI activities as complementary—rather than integral—to this commitment. [15] On the other hand, other stakeholders viewed this commitment as a compromise in which the government provides civil society with the space and environment to create a proof of concept that FOI localization can produce ambitious outcomes that can be replicated at a greater scale. [16] In the absence of a national FOI Law, the localization program can afford local administrations with the policies, tools, and capacities required to establish freedom of information regardless of what happens in the national political context. [17]

Opportunities, challenges, and recommendations during implementation

This commitment’s contributions to FOI in the Philippines will rely on allowing local and national efforts to complement each other without deprioritizing the national FOI Law. With building momentum for local FOI ordinances, they can be tailored to local needs, rather than reproducing exceptions currently in the executive FOI directive. Tracking the results of local ordinances can, in turn, build an evidence base that could motivate renewed national efforts. Overall, while an integrated e-FOI portal and local FOI ordinances could potentially address some short-term problems related to public access to information (or lack thereof), failure to address the overarching regulatory gaps could lead to the same inconsistent practice as the status quo.

Beyond deepening stakeholder consultation, the IRM recommends the following actions to enhance commitment implementation: