Co – creating the Future
"Accountability, transparency, and citizen participation. These are the key pillars of good governance that we have been promoting and practicing throughout our administration. We do this by having our constituents CO-OWN GOVERNMENT. We make sure that they are represented. We listen to them. We strive to give them information in the language and form that they understand. We empower them so that they, too, can participate in government in co-creating their own future in their own home – the Province of South Cotabato.
Our efforts in good governance enabled us to shift from being a transparent government to a more open and inclusive one. This shift in governance allowed us to be selected as the only local government unit in the Philippines to be part of the global Open Government Partnership (OGP) Network in April last year – and one of the only twenty (20) local governments in the world under the OGP-Local Program. Being a new member of the OGP, we co-created with partners from the government and the civil society our five (5) commitments to make the provincial government more open and accountable, and these are on Open Procurement, Open Information, Open Monitoring and Evaluation, Open Information and Open Mining Information.
These commitments, implemented in coordination with Mahintana Foundation, European Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines (ECCP), BAN Toxics, Bantay Kita and PH-EITI, aim at making government more transparent, participatory, and accountable so it serves citizens and not the other way around, and focus on effecting tangible results and impacts to our people measured in terms of reduction of poverty.
Sharing our initiatives and efforts in creating a responsive and inclusive local government anchored on good governance to a global audience in Georgia and South Korea was a manifestation that we are among the few local governments in the world with a strong implementation of good governance initiatives. With this, we acknowledge the efforts of our civil society leaders, the business and private sectors, and all active members of the community in helping us further improve our development strategies for good governance."