The Philippine Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Summit 2016, which was made possible with the support of USAID- Facilitating Public Investment Project (USAID-FPI) and the efforts of The International Center for Innovation, Transformation and Excellence in Governance (INCITEGov), Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) and the Jesse M. Robredo Institute for Governance, was held on March 3-4, 2016 at the Dusit Thani Manila Hotel. The Summit brought together approximately 200 reform and development partners from the national and local government, civil society organizations, business groups, and academic institutions. It aimed to broaden the reach of OGP and deepen the commitments, links, and work on local coalitions towards achieving open government reforms.
Currently, the Philippines has been strongly implementing the OGP Third Country Action Plan (2015-2017). Among the twelve (12) OGP commitments, the following clearly have expectations and implications from and to the local government stakeholders: [2] Sustain transparency in local government plans and budget: Full Disclosure Policy; [4] Attain EITI compliance: Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative ;[6] Strengthen community participation in local planning and budgeting: Bottom-Up Budgeting and National Community Driven Development Program; [8] Enhance performance benchmarks for local governance: Seal of Good Local Governance; and [10] Improve local government competitiveness: Competitiveness Index Score.
During the event, ULAP facilitated the Talakayan “Strengthening Local Governance through OGP: Learnings, Commitment and Ways Forward”. Executive Director Czarina Medina-Guce moderated the discussion with Atty. Teodoro Jose Matta of Palawan, Mayor Lourdes Panganiban of Andaganan, Isabela, and Mayor Maria Angela Garcia of Dinalupihan, Bataan as panellists. The discussion focused on OGP commitments that had the most impact on the Local Government Units (LGUs) included as panellists, and how these commitments can be enhanced or strengthened further through meaningful policy directions or policy reforms. The importance of evidence-based policy making was highlighted. The discussions also revolved around the potential role of CSOs in local governance, and how outreach in through involvement of different sectors could further enhance or strengthen OGP commitments.
Break-out Sessions for LGUs on Bottom-up Budgeting, Seal of Good Local Governance and Full Disclosure Policy, Business Competitiveness Index, and Extractive Industries were also facilitated by ULAP. The theme for the sessions was agenda-setting and consensus-building prior and after elections. The sessions aimed to enhance and strengthen performance benchmarks for local governance, full disclosure policy, business competitiveness, and transparency and accountability in extractive industries.
During the first break-out session, which covered the topic of Bottom-up Budgeting, Seal of Good Local Governance and Full Disclosure Policy, it was highlighted that improvements on the BuB and the SGLG shall be made in the coming years, and eventually shall be linked with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2016-2030. The speakers for the breakout session were San Remigio, Cebu Councilor Antonio Villamor, DILG Project Management Office (PMO) Richard Villacorte, DILG Bureau of Local Government Systems (BLGS) Melanie Quiton, Dinalupihan Bataan Mayor Maria Angela Garcia and Andaganan Isabela Mayor Lourdes Panganiban.
The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) is starting to implement the LGU Scorecard , otherwise known as “Local TARGET (Transcending Accountable and Responsive Governance through Empowerment and Teamwork),” which aims to document baseline data for governance and development aligned with the SDGs. The scorecard will be helpful to LGUs in meeting future performance-oriented standards of the SGLG and utilizing the data to respond to local anti-poverty interventions through BuB projects.
The second breakout session focused on the Business Competitiveness Index and the Philippine Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (PH-EITI). Speakers for this session included Department of Finance Director Elsa B. Agustin, Palawan Council for Sustainable Development John Pontillas, Department of Trade and Industry Atty. Luis Katibayan, and Naga City Executive Director Ruel Oliver.It was shared by the Department of Finance (DOF) representative that a bill in Congress to institutionalize EITI is already being drafted by the TWG for Reform of the Mining Fiscal Regime. To ensure sustainability, participants agreed that the EITI processes should be localized and that information submitted to national government from reports of mining companies and LGUs should trickle down to the local level. Fiscal reforms including payment of extractive industries taxes directly to the host community and not the principal place of business was strongly advocated during the discussion. With regard to the Business Competitiveness Index, the National Competitiveness Council (NCC) aims to expand the coverage to include all LGUs in its assessment. Participants also requested that there is a need to make the business competitiveness assessment inclusive, such that it should not ignore the marginalized sectors (i.e. IPs, farmers, etc.).
Through the summit, ULAP was able to document the gains of the OGP commitments and its remaining challenges. ULAP was also able to gather meaningful policy directions or policy reforms from different sectors who participated in the event as ways of moving forward. From the insights gained through the summit, ULAP will continue to advocate for better transparency and accountability measures in local governance.

The Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines wins Gold Prize in the recently concluded Global Innovation Competition sponsored by Making All Voices Count, in Accra Ghana, for the project "Increasing Transparency in Extractive Industries".
Represented by ULAP Executive Director Czarina Medina-Guce and Director for Plans Programs and Policy Genixon David, ULAP pushed for the governance innovation of combining a local multi-stakeholder platform, local open data innovations, and social accountability approaches to create plans and budgets in the local levels that reflect priorities of Local governments, indigenous peoples, mining companies, and CSOs.
ULAP is one of the 15 finalists from different countries. The finalists underwent a series of mentorship sessions for the innovation incubation, and were judged through a series of presentations to a panel of jury.
Read more here: www.makingallvoicescount.org/news/innovation-requires-learning-adaptation-and-being-open-to-making-mistakes-finals-of-the-global-innovation-competition-2016/

The Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), in partnership with Making All Voice Count (MAVC) and HIVOS International, conducted a Negotiations and Communications, and Data Interpretation and Management Workshop for the “Developing technology-based innovation platforms at provincial level: Supporting Bottom Up Budgeting (BuB) projects for 2015 in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao to identify context specific tech-based innovations to support with making the BuB reporting and monitoring more feasible and information accessible to civil society organizations, provincial government and communities at large” on February 17-19, 2016 at Cebu Parklane International Hotel, Cebu City.
ULAP Plans, Projects and Policies Manager, Crystal Eunice Dela Cruz together with Technical Officer Leolaida Aragan and Project Officer Irish Generoso welcomed the participants from the Municipalities of San Remigio and Tudela and the Province of Cebu. Ms. Dela Cruz started by briefly describing the current BuB monitoring and reporting mechanism. She also gave an overview of the project and previously implemented activities to level off all the participants.
ULAP Executive Director Czarina Medina-Guce served as resource person for the Negotiations and Communications Workshop held in the afternoon of February 17. The session started off with a role playing game simulating a situation requiring communication and negotiation between 2 groups. A short discussion followed as the simulation was processed by the speaker. The session ended with another simulation, this time requiring negotiation between 7 groups with different advocacies and agenda. The processing of the simulated negotiation was a free flowing discussion of learnings from the entire workshop.
Day 2 of the event on Data Interpretation and Management was facilitated by Department of Budget and Management – Open Data Philippines, Data Lead Miss Gianne Gaoiran. Ms. Gaoiran began with a short lecture followed by a simulation requiring participants to process data and present to their boss for action.
The workshop was designed to develop the skills of both representatives from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Local Government Units (LGUs) on negotiations and communications, & data interpretation and management. The need for these trainings were identified during the design thinking workshop and monitoring visit of the ULAP project team to the project site. The improved capacity to negotiate and interpret data is in preparation of the upcoming prototype testing for the BuB 911 hotline prototype which aims to improve BuB reporting and reporting through the province as info-mediating platform.
Pretests and post tests were conducted, which were categorized based on familiarity per subtopic and session. The evaluation had a range of 1 to 5 with 5 being ‘extremely confident’ and 1 being ‘least confident’. Results showed that more participants became more confident on the topics after the training. Pretest for both workshops ranged between 2-5. Posttest for the negotiation workshop registered an increased score range between 3-5. The data interpretation workshop post test, though with scores still ranging between 2-4, showed an increased number of participants rating themselves a 3 or 4.

The Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), the umbrella organization of all the leagues of local governments and locally elected officials, is one with the Philippine Society for Orphan Disorders, Inc. (PSOD) in celebrating the 7th National Rare Disease Awareness Week on February 22-29, 2016. PSOD, an ULAP partner for health, has taken the initiative to be the central coordinating organization for the rare disease awareness week campaign in the country, bringing together different healthcare institutions, local government units, government agencies, civic organizations, media and other private and public institutions since 2011.
Over 80 countries celebrate the International Rare Disease Day on the last day of February. The Philippines, through Presidential Proclamation 1989, declared the last week of February as the “National Rare Disease Week”. These celebrations aim to raise awareness about rare disease and help rare disease patients be diagnosed early and receive proper medical care. More so, it’s objectives include to:
Ensure that policymakers understand and acknowledge rare diseases as a public health policy priority
Improve access to treatment and care
Support the development and implementation of national plans and policies for rare disorders
Help reduce isolation of people living with rare diseases and their families
Increase and improve rare disease research and orphan drug development
There are about 7,000+ identified rare diseases worldwide which are often debilitating, compromising patient’s autonomy and quality of life. 80% of these diseases are caused by faulty genes that anyone can be carrying without their knowledge, 75% affects children, 30% of patients with rare disease die before the age of 5 and 35% of deaths in the 1st year of life may be attributed to a rare disease. On average, it takes most rare disease patients 8 years to receive an accurate diagnosis and only 5% these conditions have a US FDA approved treatment.
Click the following link to view the Philippine country site: http://www.rarediseaseday.org/
You can also check out their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RareDiseaseWeekPH