CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

Introduction

Over recent decades, many countries have gained experience with

referendums, citizens’ forums, citizens’ juries, collaborative governance, participatory

budgeting, and other models in which citizens have a more direct say.

Citizen participation is usually considered a valuable element of democratic

citizenship and democratic decision-making. Many theorists claim that citizen

participation has positive effects on the quality of democracy.

COA’s three-year (2011-2014) strategic planning exercise, identified

transparency and openness to citizen participation as key facets of its own priority

reform agenda. The public audit process is an important part of the compact between

citizens and the state to ensure government programs are effectively and efficiently

implemented and corruption and misuse are minimized. The administration’s

commitment to open government highlighted the important role of COA in

communicating and engaging citizens more directly in the audit process.

The Project Management Office of the Commission spearheaded the

implementation of the Citizen Participatory Audit or CPA as a reform strategy and

audit technique to engage civil society organizations (CSOs) and citizens in the

public audit process to improve transparency, efficiency and effectiveness in the use

of public resources. The COA implements the CPA with its civil society partner,

Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific (ANSA-EAP)

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with funding support from the Australian Government-Department of Foreign Affairs

and Trade, The World Bank, and Making All Voices Count (MAVC).

The CPA project was the recipient of the first Open Government Partnership

(OGP) Bright Spots Award during the 2013 Global Summit in London. It is also one of

the twelve commitments under the PH-OGP National Action Plan for 2017-2019.

The CPA project officially started in November 26, 2012 with a Memorandum

of Agreement signed between COA and its civil society partners. The initiative used

constructive engagement as an approach in working with both government and civil

society. In constructive engagement, the key actors are the state and its citizens. To

sustain the approach, spaces for participation have to be created where mutual trust

and openness are required to facilitate meaningful and sustained dialogue and

negotiation.

CPA is defined as COA plus citizens working together to conduct joint audits.

Under this, citizen representatives are included in the team to make government

more effective, transparent, and accountable. While this is always done under the

direct supervision and control of COA, under CPA citizens and citizen groups are not

outsiders. Rather, they sit on the same table, and are given the same powers and

responsibilities as that of the state auditors.

In terms of numbers, it is also important to note that in 2011, the Commission

on Audit only had about 7,000 state auditors that examine financial transactions of

more than 61,000 government agencies. That meant that each auditor has to

examine all the transactions of 9 agencies, making it virtually impossible for them to

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carry out their work each year. The magnitude and amount of daily transactions and

the limited number of auditors has made public audit an overwhelming task.

Theoretical Framework

Citizen participation is a process which provides private individuals an

opportunity to influence public decisions and has long been a component of the

democratic decision-making process. The roots of citizen participation can be traced

to ancient Greece and Colonial New England. Before the 1960s, governmental

processes and procedures were designed to facilitate "external" participation. Citizen

participation was institutionalized in the mid-1960s with President Lyndon Johnson's

Great Society programs (Cogan & Sharpe, 1986 p. 283).

Public involvement is means to ensure that citizens have a direct voice in

public decisions. The terms "citizen" and "public," and "involvement" and

"participation" are often used interchangeably. While both are generally used to

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indicate a process through which citizens have a voice in public policy decisions, both

have distinctively different meanings and convey little insight into the process they

seek to describe. Mize reveals that the term "citizen participation" and it's relationship

to public decision-making has evolved without a general consensus regarding either

it's meaning nor it's consequences (Mize, 1972).

Many agencies or individuals choose to exclude or minimize public

participation in planning efforts claiming citizen participation is too expensive and

time consuming. Yet, many citizen participation programs are initiated in response to

public reaction to a proposed project or action. However, there are tangible benefits

that can be derived from an effective citizen involvement program. Cogan and

Sharpe (1986, p. 284) identify five benefits of citizen participation to the planning

process:

1. Information and ideas on public issues;

2. Public Support for planning decisions;

3. Avoidance of protracted conflicts and costly delays;

4. Reservoir of good will which can carry over to future decisions; and

5. Spirit of cooperation and trust between the agency and the public.

Statement of the Problem

The general purpose of the study is to determine the effectiveness of the Citizen

Participatory Audit (CPA) of the Commission on Audit in promoting transparency,

accountability and good governance in the implementation of various government

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programs and projects. In particular, the researcher aims to answer the following

detailed inquiries:

1. What is the impact of the Citizen Participatory Audit (CPA) in the overall

mandate of Commission on Audit as a Constitutional Commission?

2. Is there a significant difference on the perceived transparency between the

government programs audited through CPA and programs not audited

through CPA?

3. Is there a significant difference on the perceived accountability between the

government programs audited through CPA and programs not audited

through CPA?

4. Is there a significant difference on the perceived good governance between

the government programs audited through CPA and programs not audited

through CPA?

Hypothesis

1. The program Citizen Participatory Audit (CPA) has no impact in the overall

mandate of COA as a Constitutional Commission.

2. There is no significant difference on the perceived transparency between the

government programs audited through CPA and programs not audited through

CPA.

3. There is no significant difference on the perceived accountability between the

government programs audited through CPA and programs not audited through

CPA.

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 4. There is no significant difference on the perceived good governance between

the government programs audited through CPA and programs not audited

through CPA.

Significance of the Study

The CPA is a pilot project that aims to involve citizens in the challenging task

of auditing government programs and projects. It is an embodiment of an ideal social

accountability initiative because it has the cooperation of both government and

citizen groups. No less than COA’s top leadership welcomes and supports it while a

regional facility, ANSA-EAP Foundation (an institution incubated in the Ateneo

School of Government), serves as intermediary for civil society advocates and

community and citizen organizations. The CPA experience indeed is a good case

study on constructive engagement. It demonstrates the process of a government

agency opening up to citizen groups, learning their ways and adjusting government

practices to accommodate citizens’ voices. On the other hand, it also showcased the

expanding appreciation of how citizen groups understood COA’s mandate and

processes. Together, they embarked on a journey on learning how to use their

differences to strengthen each other.

New as it is, the CPA project shines brightly because it highlights the

importance of government championing this kind of engagement. Leadership, in the

person of COA Chair Grace Pulido-Tan, became crucial in steering the direction of

CPA as a flagship project of COA. It responded to the President’s call for greater

transparency and citizen participation in governance. By continuing to partner with

citizens in conducting performance/compliance audits and availing of citizen

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partnerships in other areas, the COA gives more voice to citizens and empowers

them to become more actively involved in activities to improve good governance.

Experience showed that involving citizens in the public audit processes tend to make

auditee agencies more compliant with audit recommendations thereby resulting in

improved quality in the delivery of services.