The wrongs dragging ‘rightsizing’ efforts

EVEN with the diminished influence of the US over global affairs, many of its agencies have to be organized and structured to effectively attend to its continents — spanning, sprawling concerns, the US State Department in particular. The State Department’s vast bureaucracy is a dictate of the agency’s many functions in a world roiled by turmoil and uncertainty, the flexible and ever-changing nature of diplomacy, the requirements of diplomatic outposts in both the old democracies and troubled nations led by unpredictable tin-pot dictators.

Even the new mission to lead a climate-change effort has to be annexed by the seemingly unlimited mandates of global diplomacy.

So, in what ways is the vast bureaucracy of the US State Department related to the “rightsizing” initiative of the government of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.? If you were observant enough, you would readily see that despite the rightsizing declaration, a priority program of Mr. Marcos Jr., many line departments of our government seem to find their inspiration from the organization of the US State Department. The bureaucracy in many line departments tends to be vast and overwhelming and bloated. An outright defiance, if not a mockery, of the rightsizing effort.

Put simply, the Philippine bureaucracy is stricken with bureaucratic overstretch.

Here goes the organizational chart of a line department: After the department secretary, you can mostly find six undersecretaries. Under the six undersecretaries are six assistant secretaries. All these sub-Cabinet functionaries have support layers of executive assistants, secretaries, drivers and other factotums. This is just the first layer of obvious personnel bloat. Question: What functions are actually carried out by, say, “undersecretary for special concerns”? The undersecretary for special concerns may truly perform critical tasks. On the other hand, he can also perform the task of resident sycophant. Telling the Big Boss, the Cabinet secretary, this: “Ang galing, galing mo Boss.” If not that, run mundane errands for the Big Boss, the undersecretary as gofer. We have seen that on a grander scale. The Trump Cabinet survived on sycophancy. You can’t serve Trump long if you believe in the sacred tenets of the rule of law and fidelity to the Constitution.

At the regional level here, most of these line departments have regional executive directors for each and every region. Under the regional executive director are the regional technical directors, the so-called REDs and the RTDs. These executive regional directors and regional technical directors require various types of assistants and staffers, maybe fewer than what is required by the undersecretaries and assistant secretaries with their unlimited number of factotums, but still sizable enough to qualify as bureaucratic bloat.

If you count the actual number of sub-Cabinet officials (plus their factotums and aides) and the regional government executives (with their factotums and aides) their sheer size and sprawl would be enough to form a fighting contingent that we can send to Ukraine to help out in the efforts to drive out the Russian invaders. A line department can have a dozen agencies under its operational and administrative supervisions. And many of these agencies under the line departments maintain their own regional offices.

Can we have a rough calculation of the monthly gas/diesel expenditures of this bureaucratic bloat?

The government can do away with half of this top-level and middle-level bloat without hurting the efficiency of the state and the delivery of basic services. Should rightsizing venture into this territory, well and good.

The rightsizing should also make removing lowly-paid government employees Plan B or Plan C. It should first review all agency creations since the 1990s. I skipped the years of Mrs. Aquino because that was precisely the time a total of 32 state agencies, mostly nonperforming government corporate entities, were abolished under a massive government reorganization program. The rightsizing of Mr. Marcos Jr. should also muster the political will to abolish or collapse government agencies, including Cabinet creations, that currently serve marginal purposes.

If you ask experts in government structures and organizations, the last agency creation that is worth the effort and the time of the two chambers of Congress, was the creation of the Department of Information Communications and Technology (DICT). The transitioning on a global scale to a “knowledge society” made the creation of the DICT an imperative. Even if the DICT is still not sure of what grand directions to take to help realize the Great Leap Forward in computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc., it is without doubt an agency whose time has come. OK, it has to make building of tech innovation hubs near university towns its first priority.

The fact that the business process outsourcing sector and related tech services generate close to $30 billion a year in revenues and is about to match the earning power of another acronym — the OFW (overseas Filipino worker) — can justify the creation of a tech-centric government department.

The 21st century also made the coupling of transportation and information technology under the then Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) untenable. Before it was split into two, the then DoTC had more than two dozen corporate entities and agencies under its administrative and operational jurisdiction. Managing port services (Philippine Ports Authority) and regulating the maritime industry including processing of shipping franchises (Marina) are not that compatible with laying the environment for AI and cloud computing to prosper.

Congress can also defer the creation of a Department of Water Management (DWM) for the next 20 years without prejudice to the able management of the country’s water resources and also without prejudice to consumers of potable water, farms that need irrigation water, or the power generators dependent on our water resources. A DWM will just be an addition to the state bloat, without a clear purpose for its existence and being.

Rightsizing requires political will, the spine and tenacity of Nancy Pelosi, a lot of tough decision-making to carry out.

Unless, of course, the whole intent is to make rightsizing one of those quotable state buzzwords, worth zero and accomplishing nothing.