DBM reiterates push for bureaucratic rightsizing to fill up vacancies in gov't

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) reiterated its push for Congress to pass a legislation that would mandate rightsizing of the bureaucracy in a bid to fill up vacant plantilla or permanent positions in the government.

In a statement on Tuesday, the DBM said passing the National Government Rightsizing Program (NGRP) into law would lead to the reclassification of positions to fill up vacant posts in the government to ensure optimal use of manpower resources across the bureaucracy

The Budget Department, under Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, has been pushing for the passage of the NGRP since 2022.

Bureaucratic rightsizing also forms part of the priority bills under the Common Legislative Agenda of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC).

During the hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance on the DBM's budget on August 19, Pangandaman was asked how to address the long-standing issue on unfilled positions in the government.

In response, the Budget chief said that “the Rightsizing Program po will fix the long-standing issue on unfilled positions.”

The DBM had earlier said that out of the total 2,017,380 plantilla positions in the national government, 92% are filled while the remaining 8% or 168,719 positions remain unfilled as it called on heads of government agencies to prioritize contract of service (COS) and job order (JO) workers in filling their respective vacant plantilla positions.

Pangandaman explained that rightsizing does not mean outright reduction of personnel and consolidation of agencies in the government, “but at the same time, we wanted to also fix the positions, and then do reclassifications within departments and agencies across the national government.”

"We hope that the proposed bill will be passed into law this year. Ang overarching goal naman po dito ay magkaroon ng burukrasya na agile at responsive, lalo na sa makabagong panahon (The overarching goal of this is to have an agile and responsive bureaucracy, especially in this modern times,” she said.

“Ayaw naman po natin ng gobyerno na masyadong bloated tapos hindi naman po maganda ang serbisyo. Sayang ang pera ng taumbayan (We don't want a bloated government, but the service is unsatisfactory. It will be a waste of people’s funds). We will do this by determining which among the government agencies may be streamlined, and which among them need to be strengthened," she added.

The DBM said the NGRP promotes a lean, efficient, and responsive government workforce by streamlining the agency operations, rightsizing their organizational structure and workforce complement, improving interoperability in government agencies, and eliminating functions, programs, and projects that are redundant, overlapping, or no longer necessary.

Nonetheless, the Budget chief said that the DBM could issue a circular together with the Civil Service Commission “to really encourage – across the board – all agencies to already reclassify and fill up their positions.”

Pangandaman said that there are 832,812 contractual employees in the government, most of them or 69.68% are in local government units. —KG, GMA Integrated News