In the recent review of the 2023 to 2028 Eastern Visayas Regional Development Plan coordinated by DepDev 8 and participated in by government agencies from all sectors and many local government units, there is a dominant use of tables or matrices containing data that describe what the government is doing, its ability to meet targets, and providing strategies that will be inputted into the mid-term revised plan.
The review are both timely and relevant. I attended some of the planning wprkshops and it was encouraging to observe how the participants reviewed their targets and accomplishments. Some said no data was available in some indicators, others said they can add more indicators.
The representatives from the Private Sector like myself had some observations but we left much of the work to the government agency participants. We noted that many of them scrambled to come up with the data or promised to send them.
But it was apparent that targeting and data gathering still needs a lot of improvements.
Planning is difficult to do if there is no data that is collected based on statistically accepted principles. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has been able to collect and show data on fields it did not cover before. On the other hand, agencies gather data to serve their own administrative and technical requirements. Every one accepts that without quantitative indicators, managing an agency cannot be done effectively. It would be based on pure guesswork and on a hit-and-miss method, if the data will not be there to guide decision making.
To achieve this availability of data at the right time for planning purposes is difficult if not impossible to do. And is full of problems such as distance to sources of data and the reliability of the data provided by field units.
Relying on the PSA is an objective approach because its field personnel are not implementors. It is a different story if the field implementors themselves are gathering the data. There may be bias and the data gathered may not show the actual situation, leading to faulty planning.
There is a dilemma here. Accept the data as truthful and accurate or do the planning without the data. Having some data is better than having none at all. There are compromises.
However, these data may be treated with caution. In any case, it is possible to detect inflated data such as productivity that goes beyond established standards.
Thus, planning reviews are signals to those gathering the data that doing so is not and end in itself. It is done for the purpose of assessing the delivery of government services so that improvements can be made.
The plan review is, therefore, and effort to do better and to improve government services. In general, the plan review is an important step to enhancing the quality of life in this region and to lower the incidence of poverty.
Amidst all these efforts to identify quantitative indicators like number of micro-industries set up, trainings conducted, beneficiaries served, length of roads constructed and maintained, production of crops, and so forth, there is that nagging question that if all of these are happening, why is poverty incidence in this region still high at over 20 percent?
In my view, there is still much to be done in improving the quality of government services. The qualitative side of development programs and projects are not fully addressed by the government.
For example, irrigation service areas are quantified in terms of number of hectares, but many of these areas are barely served particularly those in the lower levels. Those near the source of water upstream receive the service more than those in the lower areas. Many kilometers of roads are constructed every year, but many of these are destroyed after three or more years because of the use of substandard materials. There are many other examples.
In fact, I am convinced that all of the quantitative indicators of targets and performance have downsides, referring to problems that implementors do not reveal. They might reveal this when the problem already gets out of hand, like in the crisis at the San Juanico Bridge.
Noting these qualitative factors is a challenge to planners and require a change in mindset. The technology of planning might not have the tools yet to emphasize the importance of qualitative indicators.
Major anticipatory questions useful here should be: what can happen in this government project such that the impact on the community will be reduced even if the quantitative measures are reached? What can happen to quantitative targets if the qualitative aspect is overlooked?
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