[Op-Ed] Ann Cuisia: Why the “Secure and Open the Budget Bill” is the Better Path to Real Fiscal Transparency

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By Ann Cuisia  (Republished with permission from the author who published it originally on social media. The first three paragraphs are from the expanded version that was published here.)

Technologist advocate and entrepreneur Ann Cuisia was part of the Technical Working Group (TWG) discussions on Senator Aquino’s “Blockchain the Budget” bill, where she argued for a tech-neutral, citizen-first alternative.

I just spent one of my most productive 2 hours this week inside a Technical Working Group Committee chaired by the of Office of Sen. Bam Aquino. It was a great opportunity to shine a light on salient points of the newly drafted bill where “blockchain” as a specific technology may be unknowingly hidden, only deconstructed.

Introduction

The call to make government spending more transparent is long overdue and we know the urgency of this as victims of this scandalous decades-long corruptions. We are all desperate about making the government accountable. And accountability can only start when the entire budget cycle with 32 processes are transparent. But transparency cannot be achieved by mandating a single technology. It must be built on principles that endure even as technologies change. This is the essence of the “Secure and Open the Budget Bill”, a proposal that secures public funds through openness, accountability, and citizen participation, without locking the government into costly, premature, or vendor-dependent solutions.

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Here are five reasons why this bill is the smarter, more inclusive framework for national budget transparency.

Technology-Neutral, Not Technology-Mandated

It ends the fixation on “blockchain” by allowing any secure, verifiable, and cost-efficient technology to power budget transparency. Government must set outcomes, not dictate tools.

A Real-time, Tamper-evident National Budget Transparency Platform

Instead of limiting to costly blockchain ledger as another filing cabinet, the bill creates an open, interoperable digital portal where all allocations, disbursements, and contracts are published in real time, digitally signed, traceable, and searchable by every citizen.

Data Sovereignty and Citizen Ownership

All budget data remain under Philippine jurisdiction and are legally owned by the Filipino people. Servers, systems, and third-party providers are bound by local data laws ensuring no foreign or private entity controls or “takeovers” public information.

Public Oversight, Not Political Control

A lean, expert-led National Budget Watch Council (DBM, DICT, COA, DOF, and citizen technologists) will oversee implementation and every meeting will be livestreamed and publicly archived, ensuring transparency in both systems and decisions.

Accountability with Citizen Power

The bill rewards investigative journalism and civic data analysis, criminalizes concealment of budget data, and empowers the public to monitor, verify, and expose misuse of funds, turning transparency into real deterrence against corruption.

We must start securing and opening these budget data-flows from NEP to GAB to GAA where most magic happens.

This article is published on BitPinas: [Op-Ed] Ann Cuisia: Why “Secure and Open the Budget” Is Better Than Mandating Blockchain

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