Governance system: The importance of civilian participation in the AFP

At the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA), we are dedicated to empowering public institutions to help build our “Dream Philippines.” This is our vision of a nation where government institutions deliver effectively, and every citizen participates and prospers. Founded in 2000 by Dr. Jesus P. Estanislao, former Finance Secretary and Economic Planning Secretary, ISA was built to forge values-based governance coalitions across society. Our core values remain rooted in patriotism, the common good, and sustainability. Over the past 26 years, ISA has facilitated 500 projects and collaborated with 200 partners, including 58 National Government Agencies, 53 LGUs, and 73 hospitals.

We drive this transformation through the Performance Governance System (PGS), a discipline that aligns strategy, operations, and budget to produce validated, high-impact results for the public. Originally adapted from the Harvard Business School’s Balanced Scorecard, the framework was deeply contextualized for the Philippine public sector and has since evolved into a distinctly homegrown discipline. While we proudly acknowledge its academic roots, today’s PGS is far from its original form. It is not a mere compliance exercise or documentation burden, but a discipline that aligns strategy, operations, and budget to produce validated, high-impact results for the public. It strengthens governance by embedding discipline in how strategy is designed, deployed, and sustained.

The system operates on three pillars: establishing clarity of direction, enforcing the discipline of execution, and ensuring the sustainability of reform. When an organization lacks clear direction, aligned targets, and regular performance reviews, decisions become reactive, accountability weakens, and fragmentation occurs. Over time, this creates space for inefficiency and potentially corruption to thrive.

To counter this, organizations go through increasing levels of maturity across four stages — Initiation, Compliance, Proficiency, and Institutionalization — which are validated by strict audits. True institutionalization requires installing eight specific governance elements, including Basic Governance Documents, the Office of Strategy Management (OSM), and the Multi-Sector Governance Council (MSGC). Furthermore, under the modernized PGS 2.0, an organization’s strategy is no longer a scattered list of projects; it is anchored strictly on “Big Bets and Bold Moves” (BBMs). These BBMs are broken down into multi-year roadmaps and annual Strategic Commitments (SPCs), limited to a maximum of three critical initiatives per BBM.

To equip public sector leaders for this rigorous journey, ISA provides targeted interventions, including strategy formulation, cascading, OSM capacity building, and MSGC management.

We conduct Public Revalidas and Public Governance Fora, which are democratic, panel-evaluated presentations where organizations through their leadership heads, must publicly validate their progress to advance to the PGS stage. We also offer Governance Boot Camps to equip participants with essential leadership skills, the 24-hour intensive EDGE (Empowered Development for Governance Excellence) certificate program, and seven-hour Skills Labs focused on specific needs like government-mandated systems harmonization, agile leadership, and date management.

However, the crown jewel of sustainability in any transforming institution is the MSGC. The MSGC is a critical PGS element comprised of external stakeholders who provide independent advice and accountability support to the organization. To ensure diverse and holistic oversight, an MSGC is typically composed of distinguished sectoral representatives from outside the agency, such as leaders from the academe, the church, the business sector, and the civil society.

This cross-sectoral input is vital because sustainable transformation cannot occur in an echo chamber. When a governance is weak, corruption thrives; engaging external stakeholders ensures that reforms are sustained, and continuity of direction is maintained despite internal leadership changes. The MSGC helps institutions refine their strategy, identify emerging systemic risks, and foster external collaborations. It acts as the ultimate external accountability mechanism to ensure long-term goals survive internal leadership changes. Furthermore, MSGC meetings are highly efficient; they are anchored exclusively on the BBMs and are strictly prohibited from devolving into operational reporting or administrative updates.

Nowhere is the power of this shared governance more evident that in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Both the Philippine Navy and the Philippine Army have achieved global recognition, earning their places in the Palladium Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for executing strategy. This was not achieved in a vacuum. As AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Romeo Brawner, Jr. recently noted, the evolution of the AFP into a professional force that commands the people’s trust was a result of a deliberate, 15-year strategy known as the AFP Transformation Roadmap. Anchored on the discipline of the PGS, this roadmap required the military to set clear goals, measure performance relentlessly, and subject themselves to external validation.

A significant pillar of this global excellence is their engagement with their respective MSGCs. As Gen. Brawner emphasized, while soldiers carried out reforms within ranks, the participation of those outside it was equally vital. The civilian councils — composed of leaders from civil society, academe, business, and faith-based groups — serve as the transparency and governance partners of the AFP. They provide an external check that holds the institution accountable to the public, ensuring that the goals of the AFP Transformation Roadmap reach practice, not just paper.

This brings us to a critical lesson in public sector management: in governance, isolation breeds stagnation.

There is occasionally a temptation within massive bureaucracies to view advisory councils as administrative distractions, or to restrict their meetings in the name of internal efficiency. This is a severe miscalculation. Under the disciplined framework of the PGS, MSGC meetings are highly efficient as they are anchored exclusively on the institution’s BBMs and are strictly prohibited from devolving into operational reporting.

To prohibit these councils from convening, or to retreat into isolation, eventually surrenders to the very inefficiencies they fought to defeat. Engaging external stakeholders is no mere administrative courtesy, as it is the armor that protects long-term reform from vulnerabilities of short-term transitions. Building our Dream Philippines is a relentless, shared pursuit, and shutting the door on cross-sectoral collaboration dismantles the very bridges that brought our institutions to world-class standards. We must not merely “allow” these councils to convene; we must fiercely defend their space, for they are the indispensable guardians of the nation we aspire to build.

Francisco “Popoy” F. Del Rosario, Jr. is a former president of the Management Association of the Philippines or MAP. He is also a former president of the Development Bank of the Philippines, former undersecretary of the Department of National Defense, chair of ISA and chair of the AFP-MSGC.

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