Palace fears bureaucracy can’t cope with FOI demands

Malacañang is concerned that the bureaucracy may not be ready to cope with the expected deluge of requests for public documents once a law on freedom of information is enacted.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte also raised security concerns over the release of the statements of assets, liabilities and net worth of government officials which she said invariably include information on their addresses and the names of minor children.

President Aquino—who returned on Friday from a United States trip in which he sought to showcase the Philippines as a model of transparency and good governance—was met with renewed demands to make the enactment of the freedom of information bill a priority of his administration.

Asked why it was taking so long for the administration to come up with a version of the bill that it could support, Valte said: “What happens is whenever one concern is addressed, a new one comes up and the concerns are from different sectors.”

Who will handle requests?

One of those concerns is whether the bureaucracy would be able to handle the influx of requests for documents, she told a press briefing on Friday.

Valte said the experiences of countries like Australia, the US and the United Kingdom showed that governments need to be prepared for a freedom of information law.

“Can all the agencies come up with one more unit that would handle all the requests? Of course, that is where the issue of funds and logistical concerns would crop up. There are many such issues that we are slowly addressing one by one,” she said.

She also raised the security issue involved in the release from government hands of the officials SALNs.

“That for me personally is a concern because I’m the one here (in government) and not my family. These are the types of concerns that we are trying to solve when it comes to the freedom of information bill,” Valte said.

She said the freedom of information bill “is just a facet in the entire subject of transparency.”

She said the Department of Budget and Management has been quite transparent in informing the public of its funds releases while the Department of the Interior and Local Government has been instructing local government units on the kind of information that should be made available to the public.