Analysts urge caution on blockchain bill as costly tech risks draining public funds

By Adrian H. Halili, Reporter

ANALYSTS caution that the proposed measure that will require the government to upload all budget data onto a digital portal, risks draining public funds if expensive technology contracts fail to yield actual transparency reform.

“If it will require spending on tech and consultancies that hype mere services but ultimately do not deliver or become a drain on public finances,” Hansley A. Juliano, a political science lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University, said in a Facebook Messenger chat.

The Senate last week approved on third and final reading Senate Bill No. 1506, the Citizen Access and Disclosure of Expenditures for National Accountability (CADENA) bill, which seeks to create a tamper-proof, publicly accessible digital ledger for tracking all national government expenditures in real time.

It will be developed through the adoption of distributed ledger technology, including but not limited to blockchain. A similar measure in the House of Representatives is pending at the committee level.

The proposal gained significant momentum following massive public outcry for greater transparency in government transactions after billions of pesos in public funds were siphoned off by Public Works officials, lawmakers, and contractors.

President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. also certified the bill as a priority measure to help restore public trust and ensure that taxpayer money is traceable from allocation to actual disbursement.

“The digitization of materials and putting them in secure platforms is always a good idea,” Mr. Juliano said, however noting that the government needs to be more wary of adopting new tech.

He added that it is necessary to establish infrastructure that would ensure the proper storage of information and its access to the public.

“The security of data will mean no single office can wipe out documents the way we do where we burn offices with documents during corruption scandals, but also data must be backed up constantly,” he said.

Mr. Juliano added that the process should also involve civil society, including long-time advocates for data transparency, in scrutinizing government spending.

While the CADENA bill is “not a cure all” measure, Ederson DT. Tapia, a political science professor at the University of Makati, said in a Messenger chat that as a structural reform, “it moves accountability from episodic disclosure toward continuous public oversight.”

This is necessary in strengthening public scrutiny of the budget system, which, as he observed, weakens after enactment. It also emphasizes that accountability in budgeting is shared across institutions.

“The bill could recalibrate accountability by making agencies answerable not only upward to Congress and DBM (Department of Budget and Management), but outward to the public,” he said.

“Agencies would face stronger incentives to justify delays, reallocations, and deviations from approved purposes because those actions would be more visible and easier to question. For Congress, the measure subtly shifts responsibility as well. Greater transparency during execution reduces the ability to deflect blame onto implementing agencies alone.”

Adolfo Jose A. Montesa, an adviser for the People’s Budget Coalition, said the Senate bill would allow the public to track allocations in the budget and how they are being utilized.

“This would ostensibly allow for a democratized tracking of every peso from every line item in the budget and allow all budget documents to be visible to the public,” he said in a Messenger chat.

He added that approving the proposed measure would not only enable better transparency and accountability, but also wider public participation.