Last of two parts
THE New Government Procurement Act, or RA 12009, goes further. It embraces open contracting and public monitoring and requires beneficial-ownership information that can help reveal the real persons behind companies doing business with the government.
The DBM has even begun using blockchain technology to allow verification of important budget-release documents such as special allotment release orders (SAROs) and notices of cash allocation.
The pieces are already on the table. What is missing is connecting them into one continuous chain of accountability.
One project. One permanent identification number. One searchable history.
If somebody changes the amount, the system records who changed it, when it was changed, and by just how much.
No anonymous insertion. No mysterious bicam addition. No appropriation without a parent.
That is where technology can do something rules and good intentions have repeatedly failed to do: make the trail difficult to erase.
Let the machines look for corruption
Once government spending becomes machine-readable, another possibility emerges. Artificial intelligence does not have to decide who is corrupt. That remains the work of investigators, auditors, prosecutors and courts.
But machines can tell us where to look.
Data analytics can flag a kilometer of road costing twice as much as comparable roads. It can identify contractors repeatedly winning projects in one political bailiwick. It can detect companies sharing beneficial owners, addresses, telephone numbers or directors. It can compare appropriations with satellite images, find duplicate projects, and identify suspicious last-minute budget increases.
It can also ask why 10 supposedly different contractors appear ultimately connected to the same people.
A human auditor can investigate a sample. A computer can examine the universe. That changes the economics of corruption. The traditional advantage of a corrupt official is that government produces more transactions than human watchdogs can possibly examine. Technology can begin to take that advantage away by making it possible to identify patterns that would otherwise remain buried in millions of individual transactions.
Transparency before appropriation
There is, however, one place where technology cannot substitute for political reform: Congress itself.
The most important transparency must occur before money is appropriated. Every change Congress makes to the NEP should identify its author and justification. Bicameral conference committee changes should be published in machine-readable form before ratification, with enough time for journalists, civil society, academics, and citizens to examine them.
If a legislator believes a bridge is necessary, there is nothing shameful about proposing it. Put his name on it. If a senator believes a hospital deserves another P500 million, let her defend it publicly. Put her name on it.
There is nothing inherently wrong with elected representatives advocating projects for their constituents. That is part of representation. The problem begins when that advocacy becomes invisible — when public money acquires anonymous parents.
The people’s ledger
The proposed 2027 national budget is P7.2 trillion. At that scale, transparency cannot depend upon a few vigilant senators, heroic auditors, or investigative journalists discovering anomalies after the money is gone.
We need to change the architecture.
We have spent decades trying to control corruption by writing more rules. Perhaps information technology now gives us the opportunity to change the balance of power between those who spend public money and those who own it.
Because the national budget does not belong to Congress, nor does it belong to Malacañang. It belongs to the Filipino people.
The pork barrel has survived because every time we close one hiding place, political ingenuity discovers another. Perhaps we should stop playing that game.
The objective should no longer be merely to kill pork. It should be to turn on the lights.
Give every peso a permanent digital identity. Record every hand that moves it. Allow any concerned citizen with a cellphone to follow it from proposal to payment to the concrete poured on the ground.
Make every peso traceable. Make every fingerprint visible.
Then let those who still wish to steal from the Filipino people try doing it in broad daylight.