The Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), through 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” project with Making All Voice Count (MAVC) and HIVOS, vetted the draft BuB Almanac to Surigao del Norte, Abra, and Cebu LPRATs during the project’s third monitoring visits on April 12-14, 2016, April 14-16, 2016 and April 19-21, 2016 respectively.
The BuB Almanac, which is composed of checklists and templates for BuB projects for 2015-2016, is a product of the abovementioned project’s Design Thinking Workshop where participants expressed problems on reporting delays due to varying checklists and templates per National Government Agency (NGA) per nature of project.
During the vetting and gathering of inputs and further suggestions on the Almanac, Municipal BuB focal persons and engineers were very appreciative of the technology. They said that the Almanac will be very useful to them in terms of confidence in preparing the reports, while maximizing limited human resources and ensuring the timelines of the report. Thus, this leads to avoidance of the delays in tranche downloaded to the LGUs and subsequent implementation. They, however, expressed their request that all requirements, core requirements at the least, be harmonized among all NGAs implementing BuB.
Local CSOs were also glad that their LGU counterparts will be aided by the Almanac, they however requested for a CSO kit that will assist them in explaining the BuB process and reporting back to their constituents. They said that they are very much aware of the difficulties in reporting because project status and challenges are presented as updates during LPRAT meetings.
Moving forward, ULAP looks forward to facilitate wider online and offline distribution of the Almanac in partnership with the National Poverty Reduction Action Team (NPRAT). It also looks forward to develop a 2017 BuB Almanac ahead of time to assist LPRATs comply with reporting ahead of time by providing the technical and policy information they need at the onset of project implementation.
Aside from getting inputs on the draft BuB Almanac, the team also conducted a survey on the LGU-CSO relationship, the Assessment of other sector's performance in the LPRAT, the BUB reporting alignment and the PLGU roles in BUB. The result of the survey can be found in the Project’s Lessons Learned White Paper. You can download it here.