I SUPPORT CADENA. HERE’S WHY I LOOKED DEEPER.

WHY THE COLD RECEPTION MADE ME CURIOUS

While reading the comments under someone else’s post about CADENA, I noticed that the reception was lukewarm to cold. Some readers seemed unsure what the proposal was or why it deserved attention.

Others had questions that had not been answered, while some were plainly unconvinced by what they had heard. Their reactions made me curious about why people were not engaging with a possible response to corruption.

My own reading had already brought me to support CADENA’s basic idea. Filipinos should be able to follow public money from the budget to the people who receive, spend and account for it.

Still, before asking other people to pay attention, I wanted to go deeper. I wanted to examine what CADENA could realistically do, what it could not do, and which criticisms deserved to be taken seriously.

I kept thinking about how we react whenever another corruption scandal breaks. We become angry, demand investigations and ask how public money disappeared.

That anger is justified. But it led me to the question behind my own Facebook post: We are very loud when another corruption scandal appears, so why are we so quiet when a possible solution is being offered?

That post opened a discussion that could not be completed in a few short paragraphs. This article is the longer, bigger and deeper version of that conversation.

WHAT MADE THE BASIC IDEA ATTRACTIVE

Suppose Congress approves ₱100 million for a flood-control project in your province. You should be able to follow that money from the national budget to the agency that received it, the contractor who won the project, the payments made, the engineer who inspected the work, and the audit that came afterward.

Try doing that today and you will probably end up opening several government websites, reading differently named documents and guessing whether two records refer to the same project. The information may be public, yet the story of the ₱100 million remains difficult to see.

That was the public problem I saw CADENA trying to answer. Officially, CADENA stands for the Citizen Access and Disclosure of Expenditures for National Accountability Act, while cadena also means “chain” in Spanish.

The proposal is simple at its core: Connect the records so Filipinos can follow public money from approval to actual result. CADENA has not become law, but I support the reform it is trying to create.

WHAT ARE WE BEING ASKED TO SUPPORT?

CADENA is often introduced as “blockchain the budget.” That phrase catches attention, but it can also make us think the blockchain itself is the reform.

What CADENA is really trying to create is a public trail. Blockchain is one possible tool for protecting that trail from hidden changes.

Under the Senate committee version, the records would begin with agency budget requests and the President’s proposed national budget. They would continue through the versions debated in Congress, amendments, the final budget, fund releases, bidding, contracts, payments, inspections, audit findings and reported results.

Return to our ₱100 million project. Suppose it began at ₱60 million in the President’s proposal and became ₱100 million during congressional deliberations.

The old amount should remain visible. The public should be able to see where the change happened and which part of government approved it.

After the budget becomes law, the project should keep the same identifying information as money moves into bidding and payment. When the contractor asks for a ₱30 million progress payment, we should be able to find the inspection report, the approving officer, the payment record and any later finding from the Commission on Audit.

Once I understood this, CADENA became easier to judge. I was looking at a proposed public history of government spending, with records that would be harder to separate, replace or quietly remove.

HERE IS WHAT I LIKED

The Senate committee text generally gives agencies seven working days to publish covered records. That is important because information released after the contractor has been fully paid is far less useful.

It would also keep old versions. If an agency corrects a price, contractor entry or inspection report, the earlier version would remain visible instead of quietly disappearing.

The records would use common government codes so the same project could be followed across agencies. In ordinary language, the project would keep something like a tracking number from the budget to the contractor, payment and audit.

The proposed public portal would allow people to search and download the information. Journalists, researchers and civic groups could also use an API, a way for computers to collect and analyze many public records without opening each document manually.

Citizens could report missing or suspicious entries and follow the government’s response. Named officers would be responsible for publishing the required records, reducing the familiar excuse that nobody knows who failed to upload them.

The committee version also includes administrative and criminal penalties for deliberate obstruction, destruction, concealment and knowingly false submissions meant to create the appearance of compliance. Some willful violations could lead to imprisonment and fines reaching ₱3 million.

These were the parts that moved me toward support because they deal with behavior, not merely software. Deadlines, visible corrections, named officers and consequences can still be useful even if Congress later chooses a different technology.

The proposal covers national agencies and government-owned or controlled corporations. It also reaches national public money used in public-private partnerships and foreign-assisted projects, although local governments would not be required to join.

Privacy and national security exceptions are included. Those exceptions must stay narrow because one sensitive field should not become an excuse to hide an entire contract or payment.

WHAT BLOCKCHAIN CAN ACTUALLY DO

In working through the proposal, I had to separate the useful promise of blockchain from the exaggerated version.

Imagine several people holding identical copies of a numbered notebook. Every new entry is copied into all the notebooks, so a person who secretly changes an old entry can be caught when the copies no longer agree.

That is the useful part of blockchain. It can make later alteration easier to detect and show which digital signing credential approved a record at a certain time.

Now imagine that the first entry in every notebook falsely says a bridge was completed. Ten permanent copies of that statement still do not produce a bridge.

Blockchain can preserve the record that was submitted. It cannot make a false inspection report true, prove that an engineer visited the site, or show that bidders did not secretly agree among themselves.

This is where the supporters’ language needs discipline. A record can be authentic in the sense that it came from a particular government account and remained unchanged, while its contents can still be false.

WHAT THE NAYSAYERS GET RIGHT

After looking at what I liked, I wanted to know whether the critics were simply resistant to transparency. The strongest arguments showed that the answer was no.

Some critics want the same public trail but question whether blockchain is the safest or most affordable way to build it. They argue that government could use a normal secure database with common project numbers, permanent change logs, digital signatures, public backups and downloadable data.

The critics have a point. Congress should be able to explain what blockchain adds that a well-designed database cannot deliver more simply.

Their second argument is called garbage-in, garbage-out. If an official enters a padded price, fabricated inspection or false completion report, the system can preserve that lie perfectly.

This leads to the bigger weakness. Transparency can help people discover suspicious records, but somebody still has to visit the site, check the quantities, identify the real owners of contractors and investigate possible collusion.

Digital signing credentials also create risk. They work like official electronic seals, but they can be stolen, shared, misused or operated through an infected agency computer.

Privacy can fail in the same surrounding system. Contracts and prices should be visible, while bank details, personal identification numbers and security-sensitive information should stay protected.

Then there is the supplier question. If one private company controls the software, maintenance, data format or signing keys, government could become dependent on that company long after the original contract ends.

The committee text favors open-source and technology-neutral choices, which is encouraging. I still want government to control its own data and keys, retain the ability to change suppliers, and tell the public what the system will cost over several years.

Public access must also mean usable access. A portal can technically be open while hiding information behind confusing labels, incomplete downloads, approval requirements or limits that make serious analysis nearly impossible.

These were valid criticisms, and they changed how I understood the proposal before I decided to support it. They did not give me a reason to dismiss CADENA; they showed me which claims to reject and which protections Congress must preserve.

WHAT GOVERNMENT ALREADY HAS

Government already publishes parts of the money trail. The Department of Budget and Management has a portal for budget releases and spending data, PhilGEPS carries bidding information, and existing blockchain tools verify selected budget documents or show portions of the national budget. The missing piece is a clear, required connection from the original appropriation through payment, inspection, audit and result.

That is where CADENA could add something useful. Its real contribution would be requiring agencies to connect the records, publish them on time, preserve earlier versions and answer for missing information. The value comes from those duties and consequences, with blockchain serving as one way to protect the record.

CADENA.PH must be read separately from these official systems. It is the project’s own advocacy website, and its pages include unfinished technical plans alongside claims about real-time tracking, preventing ghost projects and stopping corruption. Those claims describe what supporters hope CADENA will achieve; they do not prove that the proposed system can deliver those results, and language such as “mathematically guaranteed” goes beyond what blockchain can honestly promise.

WHERE THE BILL STANDS

The Senate passed Senate Bill No. 1506 on third and final reading in December 2025, with 17 senators voting yes and nobody voting no or abstaining. The detailed provisions discussed here come from the official November committee report, and I have not confirmed line by line whether anything changed before the Senate’s final vote.

The House has several CADENA-related bills but has not passed a final counterpart on the floor. Until that happens, we do not know the exact House proposal or which Senate provisions will survive when the two chambers reconcile their versions.

CADENA was placed on the priority list of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council, or LEDAC, in February 2026. LEDAC is where the President, Cabinet officials and congressional leaders agree on which bills should receive faster attention, but CADENA was moved out of that fast lane in August.

No public explanation specific to CADENA was found. That raises a fair question about why its priority changed, but it does not prove that LEDAC or any named official opposes the bill, and it certainly does not prove a conspiracy to hide corruption.

WHY I SUPPORT CADENA

My support came from reading the proposal and testing its promises against the criticisms. Its basic idea answers a real public problem: Filipinos should not need inside contacts or specialized training to discover who changed a budget item, who received the contract, who approved the payment, who inspected the work and what auditors eventually found.

I support the seven-day publication rule, the survival of old versions, the common project trail, named responsible officers, citizen reporting and penalties for deliberate concealment. I also support making the records downloadable so journalists and citizens can examine thousands of transactions, not just the projects government chooses to feature on a dashboard.

My support does not require me to accept every claim made in CADENA’s name. Blockchain will not prevent ghost projects or corruption by itself because the technology cannot detect every lie entered at the beginning.

Congress should still show us the final wording and the real cost. Government should control the data and signing keys, retain the freedom to replace a supplier, protect private information, and publish records in a form ordinary people and independent researchers can actually use.

The digital trail must also lead back to the physical world. Inspectors must visit projects, the Commission on Audit must remain independent, hidden contractor ownership must be examined, and citizen reports must receive real answers.

Congress should be honest about the limits too. Local governments are outside mandatory coverage, and the committee text does not clearly require a complete reconstruction of old transactions.

I support CADENA with my eyes open. The criticisms helped me see what it can accomplish, where it can fail, and what Congress must protect in the final law.

We should continue getting angry when public money is stolen. We should also be willing to examine possible solutions before dismissing them, especially one that could make every peso easier for the public to follow.

That is why I support CADENA. I see a serious attempt to give citizens a clearer trail from the budget to the contractor, payment, inspection and result, while leaving us with the responsibility to verify whether the records tell the truth.