By: Joy Aceron, Government Watch (G-Watch)/ Accountability Research Center (ARC)
16 September 2025
Participatory audit is not new in the Philippines. The earliest participatory audit in the Philippines can be traced back in the early 90s, spearheaded by the Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Governance (CCAGG) formerly headed by the late great Manang Pura Sumangil.
My organization, Government Watch (G-Watch), involved Commission on Audit (COA) in its monitoring initiatives, Textbook Count and Bayanihang Eskwela, in the early 2000s as well, but COA's role in these initiatives then was simply to be a deterrent that supported G-Watch's preventive approach to corruption.
Then, of course, there is the Citizen Participatory Audit (CPA) of COA that started under the Aquino administration in 2012.
Below I list five (5) crucial elements for a participatory audit to have a relatively better chance of success in advancing accountability in governance:
1. Ensures that the dynamism and independence of civil society is protected.
The methodology of the audit should be simple and easy-to-understand to enable ordinary citizens to meaningfully take part in it. It cannot be overly technical. One way to ensure this is co-constructing the methodology and tools with civil society and regularly improving it.
A key weakness of the CPA is that the citizens are dragged into the methodology of usual audit by COA auditors that they end up simply as warm bodies or assistants. Citizens must have ownership and leadership of the process too and the methodology or processes used matters in this.
2. A participatory audit system must include ensuring response and action on findings.
Today, COA remains effective in reporting spendings that are questionable. CPA has released many audit reports published on its website.
The challenge about COA’s work has always been on how it translates its reports to corruption prevention and prosecution. The danger for the lack of established credentials on this is that the COA findings could just be easily captured by partisan political squabbles, giving accountability a bad name. Worse, it could make people feel jaded and numb to reports on irregularities in public spending, which is dangerous for democracy.
It is important that ample attention, resources and political will is secured in responding to, and acting on participatory audit findings and recommendations.
3. The credibility of the participatory audit is paramount and independence of the process is key.
Empirical evidence show that key to the effectiveness of audit institutions is their independence. For a participatory audit to be credible, it needs to be independent.
To have a better chance of achieving independence, a participatory audit system must have (1) multi-sectoral membership capable of checking and balancing each other; (2) its processes are fully open and transparent with provisions on proactive disclosure up to the actions and response to findings; (3) regular monitoring, assessment and learning on its processes and tools involving members and stakeholders; (4) a functional unit that will serve as a secretariat of the participatory audit and will manage sufficient funding that should be automatically allocated in the budget; and (5) other mechanisms to insulate it from the influence of concerned government officials.
4. Agenda-setting must follow the principle of co-development or co-creation.
Which programs/ projects to prioritize in audit and what are the goals/ target outputs of the audit must not only be set by the government. Citizens must be set the agenda too.
The usual agenda of the government is to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. It must be explored how the agenda of participatory audit extends to truly empowering citizens.
5. Citizens/ civil society need to be provided with ample support and assistance to effectively take part in participatory audits. The support and assistance must not compromise citizen’s/ civil society’s independence and autonomy.
Support and assistance to citizens/ civil society can be in the form of (1) capacity-building, which is preferably done or led by civil society themselves, (2) technical support—only minor technical work should be delegated to citizens, (3) food, transportation and if needed, accommodation, and (4) ample lead time—a 2-week notice at least for meetings and semi-annual planning of audit projects.
These are the usual constraints to participation, so providing or attending to them would help ensure citizens/ civil society can participate effectively.
Specific comments
With regards the specific proposed ordinance, Ordinance No. 44-2025: AN ORDINANCE ESTABLISHING THE PASIG CITY LOCAL CITIZEN PARTICIPATORY AUDIT MECHANISM AND PROVIDING FUNDS THEREFOR, below are my specific suggestions and comments:
- Instead of calling the citizens who will participate in the participatory audit as ‘Citizen Watchdog’, it would be better to call them ‘Citizen-Monitor’ or ‘Citizen-Auditor’. The term ‘watchdog’ has a negative connotation of witch-hunting and fault-finding, and citizen watchdog initiatives in the past have been criticized for having “all bark but no bite” or “all voice but no teeth,” referring to watchdogs’ inability to make government respond to their findings.
- May I suggest a revised definition of the Local Participatory Audit based on how CPA and social audit are defined in literature and to ensure its mandate is broad enough to more effectively ensure accountability:
“An oversight mechanism in the local government with the active participation of civil society that checks government performance in the delivery of public services, implementation of policies and programs, and use of public funds.”
- On Section 4, instead of the term ‘constructive engagement’, may I suggest ‘constructive accountability’. The former gives emphasis on engagement, while the latter underscores the purpose of the engagement, which is accountability using constructive approach of identifying ways to improve governance instead of fault-finding and witch-hunting. For further reading on the concept of constructive accountability, see here.
- Regarding Section 5, the accreditation process, in the hands of a wrong government, may compromise the independence of civil society organizations participating in the participatory audit or constrain participation. May I suggest a more open approach: “Citizen-Monitors who will take part in the Local Participatory Audit must come from civil society organizations with known credentials in good governance work, that are either registered with the Sanggunian as provided by existing policies and/ or have a partnership agreement with the Pasig Government.”
- Section 6 on Duties and Responsibilities are well crafted covering the entire accountability process from conduct of monitoring to tracking response and actions. May I add a last one: “Provide recommendations and suggestions on how the conduct of LCP can be improved based on lessons learned.”
- Regarding honorarium on Section 7, based on our experience in G-Watch, citizen monitoring is more effective when done voluntarily. Yet, we know that citizens and civil society must be provided support for them to sustainably participate in governance, especially given shrinking donor support. My suggestion is that instead of referring to the money to be provided as honorarium, it is referred to as “per diem or financial support to cover direct expenses such as food, transportation and communication.”
- May I suggest a rewording of Section 9 on the functions of the Technical Working Group: “A technical working group (TWG) shall be created to co-construct or co-develop the LCP methodology/ process and tools…”
- Also on Section 9 on TWG, may I suggest adding “The TWG shall be responsible in ensuring the credibility and independence of the Pasig Participatory Audit (PPA) which is crucial to the success of any accountability process. It will hold an annual assessment and learning process that will assess the effectiveness of the PPA and identify rooms for improvement.” This will cover one key guidepost that I mentioned above.
- May I suggest adding one new section on Third-Party Monitoring with the following provision:
“As part of another approach to local participatory audit, the local government—through the CSO Desk—may enter into a partnership with civil society organizations that have recognized credentials for their independent conduct of citizen monitoring, that will perform all the duties and responsibilities of Citizen-Monitors stipulated in Section 6, including conduct of capacity-building and preparation of monitoring/ audit report. The agreement shall include the financial support that the local government will provide to the civil society organizations for the conduct of the third-party monitoring subject to existing applicable rules and policies. The partnership agreement must include ways to ensure that the third-party monitoring maintains autonomy and accuracy.”
This added mechanism will provide flexibility in Pasig’s Local Participatory Audit and can multiply the coverage of participatory audit. One approach is the main one—led/ facilitated by the CSO Desk with guidance from a TWG, which is similar to CPA. The other is through a third-party monitoring partnership, similar to the CCAGG model.
- May I suggest adding as a policy statement “Whereas, in enabling accountability in public governance, the Pasig City Local Government recognizes the imperative of enabling an independent, autonomous and strategic civil society.” This will communicate the importance of one of the guideposts to effective participatory audit that I enumerated above based on existing evidence.
The move of the Pasig City Local Government to pass the first-ever local participatory audit is commendable. If done well and implemented effectively, it can truly be transformative and can once again set a groundbreaking precedent and model to the rest of the Philippines and the world.
References/ related materials:
Sumangil, Pura, Anna Bueno and Joy Aceron (2022). Pioneering citizen participatory audits in the Philippines: The experience of the Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government (CCAGG). TPA Now!. Government Watch.
Aceron, Joy (2022). Constructive Accountability’: Sandwich Strategy for Textbook Delivery in the Philippines. Accountability Research Center.
Accountability Research Center on Participatory Oversight Institutions
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