Contracts, contractors

Requests for less personal data did not mean easier access, however.

In 2007, PCIJ launched a six-month review of official documents covering 71 projects funded with Official Development Assistance (ODA) from various bilateral and multilateral agencies.

The effort resulted in a three-part investigative report by PCIJ fellow Roel R. Landingin, Manila senior correspondent of The Financial Times of London, which revealed that seven in 10 projects funded by ODA loans had failed to deliver their target benefits and results.

Research for this story entailed gathering ODA project documents, including copies of contracts, memoranda of agreement, feasibility studies, cost-benefit studies, presentation materials, status reports, and related materials.

PCIJ sent letters to various government agencies to secure these documents and kept a log of request approvals and denials from July to December 2007. The log also enrolled data regarding the number of phone calls made, letters sent by fax and e-mail, and the number of employees that the researchers spoke with or were referred to.

In the end, 15 of PCIJ’s 23 official requests for the ODA series were granted, while eight were denied. The latter cases included:

• A request for documents on the President’s Bridges Program filed with the DPWH that drew no response or action for 59 working days, the longest on PCIJ’s index of denied requests. When it finally responded, the DPWH denied the request, saying that it could not share copies of the documents because these were supposedly undergoing review by the Commission on Audit (COA).
   
• A request filed with the Department of Finance (DOF) for copies of the loan agreement between the Export-Import Bank of China and the Philippine Government for the Non-Intrusive Inspection Container System Project. The DOF said it had to refer this request to the Office of the Chief Presidential Legal Counsel because the document “may fall within the mantle of executive privilege and information.”
  
  In April 2008, the PCIJ filed the same request with Finance Undersecretary Roberto Tan. This time, PCIJ invoked Republic Act 6713 and pointed out that numerous follow-up calls had yielded no response from the DOF. Finally, the DOF relented and gave PCIJ copies of the loan agreements on 13 projects (out of 16 projects requested). After a 53-day wait, PCIJ got the documents. The total effort required: 17 phone calls, three letters (sent by fax, email and snail mail), and P1,175 paid as reproduction fee.
   
• A request filed with the Philippine Domestic Construction Board (PDCB) for the Excel file version of the Consolidated Constructors Performance Summary Report, which is available in PDF format online. In denying the request, the PDCB cited a policy “to keep the source documents or files in strict confidence.”
   
• A request filed with the Philippine National Railways (PNR) for the documents on the North Rail and South Rail Linkage Projects. According to a PNR representative, the PNR’s Korean partners had “reservations of some sort.”
   

An earlier PCIJ request for information on the North Luzon Railways project also yielded no action for seven weeks or 49 days because the North Luzon Railways Corporation had to wait for the appointment of a new spokesman -- supposedly “the only person authorized to relate with the media.” The request was eventually denied.

NEDA si! NEDA no!

Initially, requests made with the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) for the story had resulted in PCIJ receiving some relevant ODA data from the agency. But after the National Broadband Network (NBN) project became the subject of a Senate inquiry, the documents stopped coming. Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, in a memorandum order dated Sept. 28, 2007, imposed a virtual gag on the release of specific NBN documents to the Senate, the media, and the public.

A lock was imposed on documents requested by PCIJ such as the minutes of the March 26, 2007 meeting of the Special Joint Investment Coordinating Committee (ICC), minutes of the March 29, 2007 meeting of the joint NEDA Board and ICC, and the project evaluation report dated March 26, 2007.

These documents were critical to a review of how and why the government decided to award the $329-million NBN contract to China’s state-owned ZTE Corporation. Ermita, however, argued in his memorandum, “Discussions in closed-door Cabinet and NEDA meetings are considered executive privilege.”

A week prior to the publication of its ODA series in February 2008, PCIJ tried once more to ask for evaluation reports, ICC data, and other related information on various ODA projects. But NEDA would not budge.

More recently, PCIJ conducted a review of the DPWH contracts database as a follow-up to the January 2009 report of the World Bank’s anti-corruption unit, the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT), which established collusion and corruption in Bank-funded road projects being implemented by the DPWH.

PCIJ imported the online registry of contracts posted on the DPWH website (www.dpwh.gov.ph) in its entirety, keeping intact the integrity of the information to the last decimal digit. PCIJ later organized the database into a searchable file using a customized comma-separated values format program.

PCIJ adopted this research method after DPWH officials denied a written request in January 2009, as well as repeated follow-up queries, for a spreadsheet version of the DPWH’s online database.

Forwarded but…

According to a DPWH staff, PCIJ’s request letter had been forwarded to the office of Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr., but that he was then on leave. The staff also said that if the request would be addressed, the DPWH would probably also provide the document in the same format.

To follow up on the request, PCIJ made a total of nine phone calls, sent two letters, and spoke with six DPWH personnel.

In a questionnaire sent via e-mail to Ebdane on February 26, 2009, PCIJ asked about the status of its request for the database. In his written response to the PCIJ questionnaire on March 6, Ebdane did not even address the query.

PCIJ also requested for the Excel copy of the latest Consolidated Constructors Performance Summary Report (as of June 2008) from the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB), the agency assigned to monitor compliance by all public agencies with the Procurement Reform Law.

In 2007, GPPB had furnished PCIJ with a 2006 summary report for the ODA series. This time around, GPPB endorsed PCIJ’s request for an updated copy of the summary report to the Philippine Domestic Construction Board (PDCB).

The PDCB acknowledged the request in just five days. The action came after PCIJ filed one letter, made four phone calls, and spoke with two people from the GPPB and PDCB.

Prior restraint?

The PDCB, an agency under the DTI’s purview, implicitly granted the request. At the same time, however, it felt the need to point out the obvious while imposing rather restrictive conditions.

Its letter read in part: “Please be informed that this report is highly technical and very hard to interpret or understand unless explained by somebody with good knowledge about the CPES.”

More than simply issuing qualified approval of the PCIJ request, the PDCB seem inclined to impose prior restraint on how and when the PCIJ could release its story.

“Before we could give you the requested report,” it added, “we require from you the following: a. Information on the user/s of the CPES data: b. Your authorized representative to be briefed about the CPES methodology and the ratings were generated/computed; and c. Undertaking that you will secure proper clearance from our office before publishing/releasing any CPES derived statistical data to ensure that the analysis and interpretation of the data is correct.” – Compiled for the editors and writers of the PCIJ by Karol Ilagan, Avigail M. Olarte and Malou Mangahas, May 2009