Sobrang Performative at Manipulated System

 

If we look at the current state of the Civil Service Commission’s Strategic Performance Management System (SPMS) under MC No. 6, s. 2012 without sugarcoating anything, it becomes clear that the issue is not simply about poor implementation. This is not a matter of people failing to comply, lacking training, or not trying hard enough. The deeper truth is this:

SPMS is a system with the right intentions, but it lacks the structure, discipline, and logic to function as a real performance management system. Instead, it has largely become a system of ratings, forms, and administrative compliance—rather than one that actually delivers results and public value.

On paper, SPMS has solid foundations. It recognizes that individual performance should be linked to organizational performance. It promotes cascading of targets. It establishes a performance management cycle. But this is where its strength ends—in theory. In practice, it does not provide enough mechanisms to make these ideas real, measurable, and accountable.

The core failure of SPMS lies in a flawed assumption: that cascading automatically means alignment. The system assumes that once targets are translated from the agency level down to OPCR, DPCR, and IPCR, alignment has already been achieved. In reality, this does not happen. What we see instead are disconnected lists of commitments across different levels, often with “success indicators” that are unclear—are they outputs, outcomes, or just activities? Instead of a clear logical flow from strategy to results, the system becomes a collection of fragmented tasks that are difficult to link to actual organizational goals.

This leads to another major problem: the lack of discipline in defining objectives, indicators, baselines, and targets. Many objectives remain vague—phrases that sound good but do not clearly define success. When objectives are vague, indicators become arbitrary. When indicators are arbitrary, targets become negotiated or guessed. In this situation, the baseline—supposed to be the starting point of measurement—loses its meaning. Instead of being based on actual data, it is often replaced by last year’s targets or ignored entirely. As a result, targets lose credibility and become easy to manipulate.

It is therefore not surprising that SPMS often turns into an “activity counting” system. Offices report the number of trainings conducted, meetings held, or reports submitted. But the more important question—did anything actually improve?—is left unanswered. The system measures what was done, not what changed. Under this setup, it is entirely possible for an office to receive high ratings even if there is no meaningful improvement in public service.

This problem is made worse because SPMS is tied to incentives. When high ratings lead to benefits, it becomes rational for people to optimize their scores rather than their actual performance. This leads to gaming behaviors: setting low targets to ensure success, focusing on easy tasks, redefining accomplishments, and rushing outputs at the end of the year. SPMS, as currently designed, does not have strong safeguards against these behaviors.

Another critical issue is that SPMS is too form-driven. The system revolves around OPCR, DPCR, and IPCR documents rather than a living system of data and decision-making. Monitoring is not consistently based on real-time or monthly data. Coaching depends on individual supervisors. Evaluation is often done after the fact. Instead of helping managers correct problems early, the system mainly records what has already happened.

In this context, CSC’s move toward a competency-based performance management system must be examined carefully. Competencies are important—they help explain why performance succeeds or fails. However, if competencies are simply added on top of a weak system, they will not fix the problem. In fact, they may make things worse by introducing more subjectivity, bias, and manipulation.

A major risk is confusing competence with performance. A person may be highly competent but still fail due to systemic issues. Conversely, someone may meet targets simply because the targets were easy. If this distinction is not clear, the system loses credibility.

Beyond these structural issues, even some commonly applied “rules” within SPMS reveal flawed thinking. These rules may appear technical, but they distort the logic of performance management.

For example, the idea that weights for core, support, and strategic functions should be roughly equal sounds fair on the surface. But performance management is not about treating everything equally—it is about prioritizing what matters most. Not all work contributes equally to organizational goals. Forcing equal weights removes strategic focus and encourages administrative compliance rather than real impact.

Similarly, the belief that the OPCR is “owned” by the director and that performance is mainly due to leadership competencies is an oversimplification. Organizational performance is not the result of one person—it is the product of systems, processes, people, and coordination. Overemphasizing leadership creates distorted accountability, where success is credited upward and failure is blamed on vague leadership gaps rather than diagnosed properly.

Another problematic rule is that the average rating of individuals should not exceed the office rating. While it sounds logical, it imposes an artificial constraint. Office performance is not simply the average of individual performance—it reflects coordination and system-level dynamics. Enforcing this rule leads to manipulated ratings, where supervisors adjust scores to meet numerical requirements rather than reflect reality.

The practice of combining Quality, Efficiency, and Timeliness (QET) into a single target with separate weights is another example of unnecessary complexity. Instead of clarifying performance, it creates confusion. People focus on checking boxes rather than understanding overall results. The system appears technical, but its analytical value is weak.

Taken together, these issues point to a deeper problem:

SPMS is focused on the mechanics of rating rather than the logic of performance.

It is designed to be administratively manageable, but not analytically meaningful or strategically effective.

Given all this, the shift to competency-based performance management will not solve the problem on its own. If the underlying system remains weak, competencies will simply become another layer of formality.

The real issue is not the lack of frameworks. CSC already has multiple frameworks—SPMS, BSC/PGS, planning and budgeting tools. The real issue is the absence of a unified architecture that connects strategy, planning, budgeting, execution, monitoring, and evaluation into a single coherent system.

Until that is fixed, any reform—no matter how well-intentioned—will remain superficial.

This leads to the most important conclusion:

Real reform is not about adding another layer.

Real reform is about disciplining and unifying the entire system so that every indicator, baseline, target, and rating has a clear source, a clear basis, and a clear contribution to public value.

No apologies. The agency that issued the policy still cannot even do it properly well after 13 years. .