De La Salle University - Manila

La Salle Institute for Governance

About LSIG

The La Salle Institute of Governance (LSIG) is a research and training institution that aims to produce new knowledge, tools, and strategies that promote transparent, accountable, participatory, and effective governance.

The Institute conducts analytical and technical studies to identify problems and establish baselines, benchmarks, and best practices in various aspects of governance. It coordinates training seminars, policy dialogues, consultation workshops, and learning exchanges in four program areas:

1. Transparency and accountability
2. Local governance and innovation
3. Democracy, rights, and citizenship
4. Peace, gender, and environment

The Institute offers customized courses to build governance capacity and improve development outcomes. It creates partnerships and knowledge-sharing mechanisms to foster awareness, generate consensus, and build support for policy and institutional reforms. It seeks to find information age solutions to age-old governance problems.

Program Areas

Transparency and Accountability
This program undertakes efforts to strengthen transparency and accountability systems in both the public and private sector. It focuses on issues related to public sector reform, corruption prevention, tax administration, budget management, citizen oversight, and the application of information and communications technology for better governance.

• The Citizen Watch on Tax Reform Project
• The Internet Studies Project
• The Electronic Commerce and Small Business Project
• The Monitoring Governance Reform Project
• The Anti-Money Laundering Legislation Project
• The Budget Assessment Project

The Citizen Watch on Tax Reform Project aims to develop a public education and citizen watch program on proposed legislation to establish a new tax management authority with strong accountability and performance-based features.

As part of the Internet Studies project, the Institute is also in the forefront of creating Social Networking Applications intended for its partner NGOs and other organizations. These applications are basically "Mash-Up" advocacy systems focusing on various Millennium Development Goals. The following are the descriptions and links to their sites.

1. MashUp Corruption
   Link: http://apps.facebook.com/mashupcorruption/
   Awareness is the first step to proper action in our fight against the biggest millenium problem - poverty. Through this mashup, we hope to enlighten the Filipinos on one of the root causes of poverty - corruption, especially in the government system. Opinions gathered from an online Filipino forum, pinoyExchange.com, will be spread via an application in a social networking site with the hopes of educating our countrymen on the issues of corruption and the opinions of others about it.


2. Take One Step
   Link: http://apps.facebook.com/takeonestep/
   We created this application to provide a simple list of endangered species taken from WWF's website as a step towards increasing the awareness of our users. We envision this application to help people understand the importance of doing their part in helping save the lives of the endangered animals all over the world. Although the effort from an awareness campaign approach is small, the information that can be acquired is a start for each one of us to take our first step in protecting our natural resources.


3. One Advocacy
   Link: http://oneadvocacy.co.cc/
   Believing in the power of advocacy in changing the world, OneAdvocacy employs multimedia like photos, videos, and web feeds from different web services to convey awareness, challenges, and hopes while promoting the efforts of the different advocating organizations and individuals. Fostering and patterned from common social community interaction, OneAdvocacy allows direct sharing and presentation of advocacies among advocates, encouraging them to take responsibility, to share, and to inspire each other as they start to perceive their many different advocacies as a unified one advocacy for the world. Using Microsoft PopFly, OneAdvocacy flexibly selects, distributes, arranges, and evaluates advocacies, and presents them in a profound and interactive manner by allowing direct exploration of different Millennium Development Goals advocacies.


4. Poverty Map Out
   Link: http://apps.facebook.com/poverty_mapout/
   Poverty. It is a very widespread phenomenon occurring all over the world. We see manifestations of this everyday, but we may not be aware on where to seek help. Our application provides awareness campaign services by mapping out locations of poverty around the globe, with facilities for viewing information gathered from other people's blogs.

Publications

The Institute plans to launch a publication program that features a Working Papers Series and a Policy Notes Series. It will also publish books on special topics as well as proceedings of governance seminars and conferences.

The Creating Space for Local Forest Management Book Project presents the outcome of a two-year project funded by the Center for International Forestry Research. This venture inquired into the dynamics of creating spaces for local forest management. Devolution is a process wherein the locus of power and control shifts from the state to local communities. The book includes six case studies that provide examples of state-initiated devolution processes. On the other hand, five cases show devolution processes that are initiated by local communities or by civil society intermediaries.

The Policy Notes Series Volume 1 Number 1 or "Corporatizing the BIR: Improving Revenue Collection Through Institutional Reform" explains how the corporatization of various revenue collecting agencies in many countries has resulted to increases in revenue collection. Cielo Magno-Gatmaytan, the author, then narrates how this process when applied to the country could lead to the "depolitization" of the BIR.

Partnerships

The Institute coordinates the Policy Research Consortium on Political Reforms and hosts the secretariat of the Civic Education Network. It also serves as the national coordinator of the Southeast Asian Conflict Studies Network that is being supervised at the regional level by the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. A memorandum of understanding has been signed with the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Extension, Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology to undertake joint research and capacity building activities on peace, development and governance issues. A similar agreement has been forged with the Sultan Kudarat Islamic Academy Foundation College.

As a member of the Transparency and Accountability Network (TAN), the Institute participates in collaborative activities that engage government, the private sector, and the citizenry in the formulation and implementation of a counter-corruption agenda. The Institute also organizes the Democracy Forum in cooperation with the National Institute for Policy Studies (NIPS) and Empowering Citizen Participation in Governance (ECPG). It is a monthly dialogue that aims to promote deliberative democracy and open up public spaces for discussing and pursuing governance reforms.

The Institute is a partner institution in managing the Local Government Leadership Award together with the Center for Local and Regional Governance and the Center for Leadership, Citizenship and Democracy of the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration and Governance; the Local Government Academy of the Department of Interior and Local Government; and the Office of Senator Aquilino Pimentel, Jr.

The donor partners of the Institute include the United Nations Development Programme, the Asia Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Swedish International Development Agency, and the Center for International Forestry Research.

Organizational Structure

The Institute is a research and training unit under the Office of the President of the De La Salle University System. It is also under the Office of the Vice President for Academics and Research. It has an executive director who is responsible for networking with various agencies and coordinating project development activities. The institute has a competent pool of academics and governance practitioners who serve as fellows and consultants in the implementation of the various programs and projects. It serves as a hub for mobilizing human and strategic resources within the university to undertake governance projects.