Economic principles for rightsizing government

One of the priority areas of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) and the Duterte administration is to implement a rightsizing of the bureaucracy through House Bill No. 5707 (HB 5707), and Senate Bill No. 1395 (SB 1395). This reform aims to create a leaner, efficient and effective government by reducing or, if possible, eliminating redundancies, overlaps and duplications in existing agencies, rules and regulations, systems and processes. The main objective of this study is to present economic principles that might aid in rightsizing the government bureaucracy. Most of the literature on civil service or public administration reforms, focus on the importance of defining the role of government to be able to assess how best to carry out their role. Looking at how basic public sector economic theory define the role of government would bring one perspective to current efforts to rightsize the government. In addition to economic principles, the proposed framework also considers the legal mandates such as the Constitution and other laws; planning frameworks such as the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) for 2017 to 2022; the Ambisyon 2040 vision; and international commitments like the United Nations Agenda 2030’s Sustainable Development Goals and trade agreements. One of the outcomes of this research is a diagnostic framework that could be used as a guide in reviewing and evaluating the roles and relevance of departments, national government agencies (NGAs) and programs. Applying this framework to NGAs in the same sector would allow the identification of overlaps and redundancies.