This short paper briefly looks at Balangay and how it was developed as a useful application of digital technology to address a specific governance problem of Legazpi City. It also examines the challenges that Legazpiitfaces in enabling strategic collective action to promote responsive and accountable governance.
In a nutshell, Balangay is a cloud-based information system that aims to provide “prompt, reliable and understandable information” regarding various natural disasters that may threaten the Legazpi City, such as typhoons, flooding, landslides, earthquakes,and volcanic eruptions. It comes in the form of a web and mobile app that is meant to help prepare the City’s residents for any possible calamity.
The Philippines has a long history of state–society engagement to introduce reforms in government and politics. Forces from civil society and social movements have interfaced with reform-oriented leaders in government on a range of social accountability initiatives – to make governance more responsive, to introduce policy reforms, and to make government more accountable.
This provides background paper for a learning event on transforming governance, which presents vertical integration as “an effective way of doing accountability work because it can reveal more clearly where the main problems are, permitting more precisely targeted civil society advocacy strategies.”
If we are to elect Duterte to the presidency, we must first ask ourselves: how different is present-day Philippines from Davao City of the 1980s?
His resignation shows how a person can reconcile the tension between his individual political disposition with his responsibility to a cause, a collective or a party
If you think that Marcos was the best president we ever had, think again
Using the ways of the old to fight for the new is like becoming the enemy you want to defeat
Ferdinand Marcos and Lean Alejandro were two Martial Law figures who approached writing in markedly different ways
The Robredo case underscores one critical point for the Left: the new Left is out there. The current Left can either recognize this and do something about it, or once again be left out in the emerging politics of change.
Robredo said he expects bad people to be smart and to fight hard; so to defeat them, good people should not only be smarter, they should also fight harder.
This paper explores the pros and cons of a people’s initiative, by revisiting the attempts of PIRMA and Sigaw ng Bayan, and examining the barriers to making it operational and applicable.