By Dean Aubrey Caratiquet
Reinforcing the administration’s thrust towards transparency and accountability, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. signed Executive Order No. 126 s. 2026, which institutionalized the Centralized Open Monitoring Platform for Appropriations and Spending Statistics (COMPASS) Portal as the unified and publicly accessible platform for viewing the government’s budget and expenditures.
Launched on June 26, 2026, by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the website enabled Filipinos to track government expenditures by department, agency, funding source, and purpose, by fiscal year.
EO 126, moreover, aligns with the provisions of Republic Acts No. 11032, 10844, 12254, and 11292, as well as Executive Order No. 55 s. 2011 and Executive Order No. 29 s. 2023 in providing the citizenry a glimpse of what flows in and out of the government’s coffers.
Section 1 added, “The Portal shall be capable of interfacing with existing government systems, including but not limited to the IFMIS, Budget and Treasury Management System (BTMS), Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS), Digital Information for Monitoring and Evaluation (DIME), the E-Gov PH App, and such other systems as may be identified by the DBM.”
DBM’s COMPASS Portal encompasses all concerned national government agencies, including government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs) and government financial institutions and local government units (LGUs), and shall serve as a repository of information on program/project performance, as well as procurement and transparency-related data across an entire national budget cycle.
Section 4 added, “The disclosure requirement under this Order shall not apply to information whose publication is prohibited by law or would compromise national defense or national security, violate RA No. 10173 or the “Data Privacy Act of 2012,” or contravene other applicable laws, rules, and regulations.”
EO 126 also calls for the creation of a COMPASS Council that would provide policy direction and oversight for the website, led by the DBM and comprised of the following members:
- Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT)
- Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG)
- Department of Finance (DOF)
Meanwhile, administrative and disciplinary sanctions await any erring public officer or employee for failure to comply with the provisions of this legislation.
The COMPASS Council is likewise expected to formulate and issue guidelines for the implementation of EO 126 sixty days from the date of publication in the Official Gazette, in coordination with other concerned agencies and representatives from civil society organizations, the academe, the media, and relevant industry stakeholders.
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