With every new administration also comes new jargons, buzzwords and programs that new leaders use as they put their best foot forward and try to make a good impression.
This time around, the planned “rightsizing” of the bureaucracy is now touted by Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman is being touted as resulting in “upsizing.”
In a recent radio interview, Pangandaman said that “compared to downsizing, which automatically means reduction in the number of personnel, rightsizing may also mean strengthening the requirements of an agency.
For instance, she said the Department of Budget and Management could recommend to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. the approval of a bigger budget and increased manpower to strengthen or give a bigger mandate to an important government office.
While the DBM has yet to determine which agencies needed a budgetary and staffing boost, she said their initial studies showed that the public education and health sectors could be expanded in the rightsizing.
Such priority sectors could absorb jobs to be shed from agencies to be downsized since government employees to be displaced by the rightsizing plan would be retooled and retrained for new employment.
A proposed bill to be pitched before Congress seeks to “give the President the power to study the bureaucracy, and review the mandate and functions of existing agencies.” If passed into law, the executive branch would set a timeline to scrap, merge or create government offices. The economic team’s proposal was to give the President authority during a one-year period to rightsize the government since abolishing government agencies currently requires congressional approval.
Any proposal to rightsize is always makes for good press, after all, the intention is to make things right or better. If the new administration is serious about its plan to “rightsize” government, its leaders have to realize that after the fancy jargons and buzzwords will come the work that will need to be done. Hopefully the know what they are doing so another rightsizing effort won’t have to be necessary to undo any damage wrought by good intentions followed by poor execution.*
