When the phenomenon of globalization impacted on outdated bureaucratic systems, the aspect of data control suddenly turned critical as information was not simply networked through global markets but also the expertise to wield data seemed limited to those with the appropriate technologies. For an economy deficit-driven, corrupted, crook-controlled and largely dependent on labor and brick and mortar assets, often the quickest response to the globalization challenge was to outsource and depend on vicarious data management providers.

To emphasize the obvious, doubling within ten years from the eve of globalization the United States Department of Homeland Security estimated that during Gloria Arroyo’s incumbency over 40 million merchandise shipments were processed but only 1% of inbound cargo was examined by the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

Automation is expensive. Maintaining an information technology (IT) system, updating and applying home-grown expertise malnourished on a civil servant’s salary even more so. Never mind that cluelessness had exponential costs that far outweighed these and the propensity for corruption when data is controlled leads to even more unimaginable costs.

Whoever controlled data controlled Customs. The identity and beneficial control of an outsourced data contractor is critical. It is all-too-easy to establish falls fronts, fund those and have those contracted as outsourced data management providers where clandestine beneficiary interests straddle conflicted client and service provider platforms. Dummies are a dime a dozen. One can be had to effectively cloud and cover conflicted relationships comprising a conspiratorial web.

To identify, simply list the names of officials then and now and draw connecting lines among current and past business interests, partnerships, employer-employee, supervisory and subordinate relationships, and other covert commonalities that define conflicts of interest. Now add client-service provider contracts.

For the BOC, an appendage of the Department of Finance (DOF), the criticality of risk involving clandestine connivances cannot be underestimated. More where Benigno Aquino III’s mandate is founded on mitigating systemic corruption passed from administration to administration, recycling and resurrecting as a convoluted web of hidden interests forms the superstructure for dubious governance.

Five years ago, on the eve of the imminent junking of some of Arroyo’s officials leading to the Hyatt 10 betrayal, a study sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was being conducted covering the Finance Department’s BOC. The findings presented critical revelations made even timelier by the possibility that entities who now wield authority on one end and outsourced responsibility on another might have spawned from a single side.

In other words, little may have changed save for the institutionalization of detrimental systems where these recur, recycle and reaffirm deceptive associations.

While there are other studies of the processes of the BOC, for now, we will confine our analysis to those under the USAID-sponsored report if only to show that what infected the BOC has survived political firestorms and seems to have petrified as institutional afflictions that curiously, few or none in the present bureaucracy bother to correct.

In commentaries on the BOC’s Management Information Systems and Technology Group (MISTG), the Business Mirror more than once exposed data manipulation as a basis for corruption. The media coined the term “The Pindot Gang”. Yet nothing has changed. Never mind that the anomalies reflected by data discrepancies have reached an increasingly concerned international audience. And never mind that foreign and domestic traders continue to be victimized.

Evidenced by the study’s diagnosis, the trademark lack of coordination in the Aquino bureaucracy might find a second home in the DOF and the BOC. Against global best practices for effective risk management-based systems, let us review what was revealed albeit today continuously ignored.

Among the identified benchmarks effective risk management needed “automation coupled with the development of databases that serve identification, analysis and monitoring”. It also needs “pre-arrival data collection” and “layered controls using inspection, data analysis, certification and intelligence sources for deterrence and interdiction”.

The BOC employs a screening process called the Selectivity System where the programming and installation of screening is undertaken by the MISTG which manages the computer system. The study listed some of the MISTG’s problem areas.

One, the quality of screening development is poor, lacks specificity and prevents account-based monitoring, meaningful audits and analyses.

Two, screens are not updated regularly allowing for manipulation and connivance with encoders in order to obtain preferential routing within the Selectivity System.

Three, there is no formal system for tracking operational experiences or compliant behavior enough to guide decision-making. In effect, the BOC IT system does not “learn”, there are no formal feedback mechanisms, territoriality is prevalent, the data is not shared, “narrow” interests prevail and coordination resisted. Aggregated, these constitute a corruption culture.

Sadly, despite having better choices, Aquino’s bureaucracy has recycled those who perpetuate these weaknesses, thus reconstituting a web of questionable relationships. Recycling, when done haphazardly, nurtures institutional corruption.