Representatives of the pilot agencies for the revised Procurement Reports, experts and technical staff of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and Open Contracting Partnership, representatives of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Government Procurement Policy Board – Technical Support Office, good afternoon.
First, allow me to thank all of you for your contributions and continued support as we work together to improve our procurement processes in pursuit of one of President Marcos Jr.’s priority agendas—bureaucratic efficiency.
Our collective effort here today is important as it supports the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals on reform and efficiency[1], which mandates the UN to implement changes to pursue “more cost-efficient support services, by reducing the duplication of functions and administrative and transaction costs through the consolidation of support services at the country level; and the requirement for integrated support across the United Nations system for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
The work we’ve done today, in furtherance of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, is also an affirmation of our commitment to improve the procurement process and pursue e-governance as we move closer to the finalization of the revised Procurement Reports. Our shared efforts signify our belief that the conduct of proper procurement should be guided by bureaucratic efficiency, transparency, and service to the people.
As you know, the Pilot Testing of the revised Procurement Reports was approved by the GPPB on April 7, 2022 as the first step to its automation. These automated Procurement Reports shall provide a clear and real-time picture of an institution’s procurement performance by generating diagnostics that will help it adjust and set priority action plans for improvement.
So we unlocked a milestone today as we move forward in rationalizing our procurement forms to enable better procurement planning and monitoring by Procuring Entities.
While there is much to achieve, each small win is a step towards the transformation of the public procurement system.
Indeed, the implementation of the revised Procurement Reports and the Data Sharing Agreement with the SEC are steps towards this end. With these, Procuring Entities will be able to track and assess their performance, even in the interim.
Not only that, these will provide a holistic view of the status of government procurement for the purpose of identifying delays and bottlenecks for quicker resolution.
More importantly, we can make data-driven decisions and actions with the tools we now have.
I’ve said it time and again, digitalization is our way forward. Among other efforts of the DBM for digitalization, we are working towards the development and implementation of the Budget and Treasury Management System.
The key objective of the BTMS is to achieve the future state of Public Financial Management where all spending agencies would capture government transactions at source using the BTMS as the sole accounting and fiscal reporting system. Our efforts towards digitalization of our procurement system are complementary initiatives.
Moreover, we will also explore reforms in our procurement processes. In fact, Executive Director Weng Ruiz and Atty. Dennis Santiago and I met with the World Bank Country Director Diop on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings at Washington DC two weeks ago to discuss technical assistance in this aspect.
With a complete digital ecosystem, we will strengthen the integrity of our processes, diminish human discretion, expedite inter-agency coordination, and ensure the efficient delivery of public services.
So this is just the beginning of our journey. As we move forward towards digitalization and work hard to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, let’s keep in mind that each small step we take toward bureaucratic efficiency is a stone cast in the water that creates many ripples. So let’s make our efforts today ripple throughout our institutions: starting with our respective offices, let’s help the government work more efficiently as we deliver our services to the Filipino people.
My deepest thanks again to our partners today. You are all champions of bureaucratic efficiency.
Assalamu Alaikum! Maraming salamat po at mabuhay tayong lahat!
[1] https://www.un.org/ecosoc/sites/www.un.org.ecosoc/files/files/en/qcpr/2018-sg-report-adv.pdf
