During the first term of Alfonso S. Casurra as mayor of the City of Surigao and until today, his priority agenda include reforms in the city’s procurement system, revenue generation and administration, organizational effectiveness in services delivery and human resource development, and the strengthening of alliances in the local community focusing on participatory governance.

Procedural Reforms in Procurement System
The key decision undertaken is to end the practice of favoritism. Even before the envisioned reforms were put to work, the city administration already made it a point to both the personnel concerned and the goods and service providers that the City Government is committed to bringing about change in the system.

	City of Surigao's TAG scorecard as of October 2005, two years after Mayor Casurra implemented reforms in government transactions.

The transparent accountable governance (TAG) project enhanced the City Government’s efforts through a series of workshops, group discussions, meetings and consultations conducted with all the stakeholders.

Reforms and strategies done in the procurement system include:

• Preparation of annual procurement plans
• The creation of a new Bids and Awards Committee where the mayor no longer sits as the chairperson
• The use of the electronic procurement system provided by the Department of Budget and Management
• Document tracking including the use of processing slips and logbooks
• The delegation of alternate signatories in case principal signatories are on leave

Results of the reforms are indeed satisfactory. In 2006, the city has already complied with the provisions of R.A. 9184. Also in this year, the employees and the stakeholders concerned have already adopted the new procurement system.

Revenue Generation
The passage of a new revenue code was among the top priorities of the administration of Mayor Casurra. Although initial gains were not fully realized on the first part of its implementation—primarily because some provisions were deferred by the members of the Sangguniang Panlungsod—the City Government’s action planning with each of the city’s department allowed for generating clearer revenue targets. The TAG-initiated workshops participated in by employees further improved customer service, and the one-stop shop for obtaining and renewal business permits initiated every year improved satisfactory customer experience. The “one-stop shop” project enables businessmen to get and renew business permits in as early as two hours.

Meanwhile, procedural reforms on the assessment, collection and recording of real property taxes were implemented, furthering the city’s collection in outstanding level!

Organizational Effectiveness

	City hall employees listen intently in one of the PSEP and PSEA seminars held at the City Function Room.

Seventeen departments of the City Government have completed the Public Service Excellence Program (PSEP) and the Public Service Ethics and Accountability (PSEA) trainings. These workshops largely contributed to redirecting work attitudes toward service efficiency and reviewing better delivery of key customer service processes like licensing, assessment, building permit application, and delivering of health services. Also, the City Government trained 23 of its employees to become PSEP and PSEA trainers.

Organizational development or re-organization efforts were made, gearing toward rationalizing functional structures and right-sizing of the local bureaucracy.

Parallel to Mayor Casurra’s executive agenda is the Capacity Development Plan. This tool provides, among others, a rough assessment of department functions, personnel requirements and training needs of the city employees.

Participatory Network
The creation of the private sector-led City Coalition for TAG (CCTAG), the Civil Society TAG Network (CSO-TAN) and the Anti-graft and Transparency Advocates of Surigao Inc. added additional areas of cooperation aside from those already provided for under the Local Government Code and other issuances. Such allowed for a much closer relationship, more open discussion of issues and other feedback, especially through the scorecards process. These alliances also enabled us to successfully look into the procedural review of the procurement process.

The CSO-TAN also allowed other people’s organizations to be given voice and participation even though they did not met accreditation requirements to be a member of the local special bodies.