IN MANY of the countries around us, the government is run by career undersecretaries who work under the Ministers who are members of the Cabinet. These Ministers are also members of Parliament who were appointed by the Prime Minister.
In some countries, there are Permanent Secretaries in each of the ministries, but they are also subordinate to the Ministers.
As far as I can recall, all undersecretaries of the Philippine government are supposed to be Career Executive Service Officers (CESOs) or Career Service Executive Eligibles (CSEEs), even if they all serve under the Secretary who are all political appointees. The only exception to this rule are the undersecretaries of the DFA, but they are also career Foreign Service Officer (FSOs).
Everyone all the way down to Bureau Directors are also supposed to be either CESOs or CSEEs, but over the years, many non-career undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and directors have been appointed to government positions, meaning that they are political appointees.
If we shift back to appointing the career officials, we will have the advantage of having continuity in government programs, even if the Secretaries are replaced every six years, or shorter than that. Without career officials, there is no institutional memory in our governance.
HYPERLOCAL E-COMMERCE FOR LOCAL GOV’TS
The good news is, there are already many e-commerce platforms that are helping small business owners (SBOs) sell their products online, such as Amazon, Lazada, Shopee and Carousel.
The bad news is it is still difficult for the smaller and poorer SBOs to join those platforms, because of prohibitive entry fees and punitive commission rates.
Of course, it’s a free market out there, and the smaller and poorer SBOs are free to decide whether they will join the bigger online platforms or not, but they do not have much of a choice, because of affordability issues.
Aside from that, the steep commission rates of the bigger platforms are not sustainable for them, because their margins are already very low.
My solution to this problem is to create local e-commerce platforms that would be funded and subsidized by local government units (LGUs), so that the local SBOs, big or small, could easily sell their products online, meaning that they don’t have to pay prohibitive entry fees, and they need not pay for very high sales commissions either.
I am calling it hyperlocal, because we could geotag the platform so that only local sellers could sell to local buyers.
If any LGU is interested, my development team has already created the template for the platform, and we could now customize it for any Mayor or Governor who is interested./PN
