PH Senate expands public access to AI-assisted scrutiny of nat'l budget

MANILA – Artificial intelligence (AI) and citizen-developed digital tools are helping the Senate scrutinize the proposed PHP7.2-trillion national budget faster, with an online tracker now allowing Filipinos to examine congressional project insertions and funding changes.

During the Senate Committee on Finance hearing on Monday, Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian said civil society organizations (CSOs) produced an analysis of the House-approved 2027 budget within a day using AI and computer coding.

He noted that similar assessments previously took one to two weeks, giving senators less time to examine questionable allocations before deliberations.

"Dahil gumamit kayo ng technology, gumamit kayo ng artificial intelligence, gumamit kayo ng mga coding (Because you used technology, artificial intelligence and coding)," Gatchalian said, crediting volunteer budget analysts for accelerating the review.

He said the Senate has incorporated links to independent analyses, including those developed by BetterGov.ph and the People's Budget Coalition (PBC), into its Budget Transparency Portal to make spending information easier to understand and examine.

PBC co-convenor Kenneth Abante, meanwhile, announced the launch of a digital tracker allowing citizens to examine infrastructure allocations by district, including projects added, reduced or removed in the House of Representatives version of the national budget.

The platform covers approximately 18,000 projects, including nearly 7,000 House-added infrastructure items worth an estimated PHP190 billion that the coalition flagged for lacking publicly available supporting documents.

Abante said users could identify districts receiving the largest additional allocations and compare changes made to the original National Expenditure Program submitted by the executive branch.

"We need to reimagine our people power in the budget," he said, emphasizing the role of citizens, journalists and civic groups in monitoring public expenditures.

The coalition's findings remain subject to verification and do not automatically establish irregularities in the identified projects.

Finance Committee chair Senator JV Ejercito said making budget information available was only the first step, stressing that the public must also be able to use the data to question government spending.

"Transparency is more felt when people can actually use the information to ask questions and hold their government accountable," Ejercito said.

The Senate's online portal provides access to budget documents, committee schedules, hearing recordings and independent CSO analyses, although the latter do not represent official Senate findings.

Gatchalian encouraged more organizations to submit sector-specific reviews covering education, health, transportation and infrastructure for possible inclusion in the portal.