OpenAudit Philippines

Strengthening Governance Research and Fiscal Accountability with AI-processed Audit Reports

OpenAudit is an academe-civil society initiative that brings new AI and deep learning tools to advance leading-edge governance research along with reform advocacy to strengthen accountability, effectiveness, and civic engagement in the use of public funds. Beginning with the Philippines, where the national Commission on Audit (COA) has published more than 30,000 annual audit reports since 1998—possibly the longest and most comprehensive series of annual audit reports in the developing world— OpenAudit aims to transform these documents into a searchable and analyzable public resource. By processing these previously inaccessible audit reports using agentic AI and advanced computational methods, we reveal patterns of fiscal management across all Philippine Local Government Units through normalized disallowance ratios.

This platform provides an beta version of what will be a living public-good infrastructure for evidence-based research and policy reform advocacy that can be expanded to other developing democracies with publicly-available and digitized audit reports. We present novel "red flag" indicators of fiscal anomalies based on judgements by auditors made in these reports concerning the (a) disallowances (disapproval in audit of a transaction, either in whole or in part); (b) suspensions (a temporary disallowance, entailing transactions or accounts which appear illegal/improper/irregular unless satisfactorily explained or justified); and (c) charges (irregularities concerning non-collection, undercollection, non-remittance, or underremittance of collections). We provide data for these over the period 2016-2022 in ratio format as well as in terms of per-capita levels.

Data Sources and Methodology

We combine three authoritative government datasets:

Indicators:

For each LGU, we calculate several metrics both annually and in aggregate over the period 2016-2022:

  • Notices of Disallowances/Suspension/Charges per capita
  • Notices of Disallowances/Suspensions as a ratio of Total Operating Expenditures
  • Notices of Charges as a ratio of Total Locally-Generated Revenue

Coverage and Impact

81
Provinces Mapped
146+
Cities
1,484+
Municipalities
7
Years of Data (2016-2022)

Our comprehensive dataset represents the most complete public accountability platform for the Philippines, covering virtually all LGUs with available audit data. The platform updates as new COA reports are released, ensuring citizens have access to the latest information.

Beyond Individual LGUs

The aggregated data reveals broader patterns that merit investigation:

  • Regional variations in fiscal management practices
  • Correlation between disallowance ratios and development indicators
  • Temporal trends showing improvement or deterioration
  • Clustering of high-ratio areas that may indicate systemic issues

Technical Implementation

Open Source and Transparent

OpenAudit is built on principles of transparency and reproducibility:

  • Data Processing: Python scripts normalize and match COA disallowances/suspensions/charges with BLGF expenditure and PSA population data
  • Visualization: Interactive Leaflet.js maps with GeoJSON boundaries for all LGUs
  • Open Access: All code and processed datasets available for verification and reuse

Data Quality and Limitations

We acknowledge several limitations in the current dataset:

  • Some LGUs lack complete data across all years
  • Matching between different government databases can be imperfect due to naming inconsistencies
  • Disallowances may be subsequently cleared or appealed, which is not reflected in annual totals
  • The ratio alone doesn't distinguish between technical violations and serious irregularities

Despite these limitations, the disallowance ratio provides a valuable starting point for understanding fiscal management patterns and identifying areas that warrant closer examination.

Research Impact

OpenAudit has been honored MIT Open Data Prize in recognition of its contribution to making public sector information usable for research and government accountability. This initiative represents a collaboration between academic institutions and civil society organizations working to strengthen fiscal transparency and accountability in the Philippines.

OpenAudit Philippines is an independent civic technology initiative dedicated to making government financial data accessible and actionable for all Filipinos.

Data Sources: Commission on Audit Annual Audit Reports (2016-2022) | Department of Finance Statement of Receipts and Expenditures (2016-2022)

This platform presents publicly available government data for transparency and accountability purposes. Users should verify information independently for critical decisions.

Explore the Map