This case study summary reflects on some of processes, mechanisms, actors and activities at play at various stages and levels of the programme, which made it possible for civil society monitoring to cover all the Textbook Delivery Programme’s possible vulnerabilities to corruption and inefficiency. It attempts to unbundle processes at every level, and measure the intensity of the actions/tactics per level using vertical integration as a framework for analysis.
In the 1990s, the Philippines government was corrupt, and the Department of Education among the worst offenders. In high schools, the shortage of textbooks was so great that eight children had to share a single copy. After Congress passed the Government Procurement Reform Act, the education department set to work to provide the right number of high-quality textbooks to the nation’s schools. A crucial aspect was mobilising civil society NGOs to check that suppliers were delivering what they promised, a key monitoring initiative being Textbook 1-2-3.
PFMP’s technical assistance encourages transparency in government’s procurement process
In the 1990s, the education sector in the Philippines faced a major crisis. The Department of Education (DepEd) was accused of extensive corruption, in particular in the field of textbooks procurement (according to Philippine law the government is obliged to provide students with free textbooks) (Ramkumar 2010). At least three forms of corruption were suspected: officials were awarding overpriced contracts to unqualified bidders, suppliers were not honoring their contracts (many textbooks remained undelivered even after the government had paid for them), and some vendors were providing books of poor quality (Ramkumar 2010).