MANILA, Philippines — It would not be enough to have formulated a Governance Charter, Strategy Map, and Performance Scorecards to get initiated into the Performance Governance System (PGS). Three additional steps are also necessary to complete the “initiation phase.”

The first of these is to secure alignment with the priorities the national community is seeking to pursue. “Alignment” is a word we would find very often along the PGS pathway. In this instance, it reminds us that we cannot set out towards a given destination, without seeking to ensure that we are moving in the same broad general direction where the national community is heading. This is an essential feature of governance: an explicit recognition that we are not an island unto ourselves; we are part of a bigger whole, whose progress we are duty-bound to promote and contribute towards through our own governance undertaking.

How might this alignment be secured? Fortunately, the President articulated a Governance Agenda during his Inaugural Address and his first State of the Nation address. In that Agenda, he specified the strategic priorities the national community must pursue. These include: “lifting the nation from poverty” through “responsible citizenship” and “exemplary governance” through a “multi-sector governance mechanism” (stressing private-public partnership) and a “streamlined and constituency-oriented government” with focus on “investment promotion,” “fund mobilization and fiscal stability,” “infrastructure development” and “supply-chain development for farmers;” with emphasis on service to the constituency through “health, education, job creation” and “housing in safe communities.” Since these are all-encompassing national priorities, it is essential for any governance program to “connect” with them: this connection can be expressly shown by indicating how one’s Governance Charter, Strategy Map, and Performance Scorecards – the initial governance documents – contribute directly or indirectly to the pursuit of these national priorities. The same reference may also be made to the NEDA Philippine Development Plan (PDP). An “introduction” to these initial documents should be written to specifically point to the needed connection and alignment.

The second of these additional steps is to make a formal commitment that adherence to the initial governance documents is deeper and more genuine than pro-forma box-ticking. Once these have been crafted and formally adopted, there is need for a compact involving key sectors of the local community or stakeholders of the broader national constituency that is being served by an agency, a school or a socio-economic enterprise. That compact explicitly articulates and expresses the seriousness with which the PGS is going to be used as a tool for governance that delivers transformational, breakthrough results, as stipulated in the Performance Scorecards.

Once a compact has been executed, there is need for the third additional step, which consists of organizing a “Mars Team,” made up of young, competent, dedicated staff members, who are given the clear responsibility for attending to all the operating requirements of the PGS such that it actually delivers what it promises. While the members of the “Mars Team” may continue to perform their other functions, still it must be clear that they have to set aside time and professional attention to take on the heavy responsibility of ensuring that governance works and that the initial governance documents should eventually be worth several million times more than the value of the paper on which they are printed.