Tao po?!

Remember the last time you tried to renew your driver's license? I do. For many reasons. For one, I spent my whole birthday at the Land and Transportation Office (because I was wrongly informed that renewals can't be done earlier). Second, I had to pay a 'late fee' because the Land and Transportation Office's system was down and they couldn't issue my license. I had to come back later which pushed me in the field of expired license holders.

No discussion, not even with the senior manager helped. Instead of an apology for the inconvenience of wasting my time, I had to pay a penalty.

It's scenarios like this one which repeats day in day out in Philippine government agencies. And millions of Filipinos (and a number of foreigners like me who don't use fixers to get their local paperwork done) are exposed to inefficient, overworked, and underpaid government "service" providers. Customs, police, immigration and tax officers, traffic enforcers... The list is long. The feeling of helplessness is ever present.

To give (frustrated) Filipinos a voice to demand the government "service" that's promised to them and to point out shortcomings, is the goal of taopo.org. The tagalog term "Taopo" is used when knocking on someone's door, asking "anybody there?". Metaphorically used, the website taopo.org wants to knock on government's door.

But the site is not just another online platform to anonymously complain and rant. In fact, active citizenship to the founders of the site also means for citizens to provide solution to the problems posted.

The team of editors then gets to the meat of the postings and gets in touch with the respective government agencies involved to bring the issues to their attention (for example if garbage repeatedly is not picked up in a certain area of Metro Manila) and to follow up.

And, an agency or officer who actually helped solve a problem can be thanked and awarded - using the social media platform of course.

Taopo.org is a young but good example how the ordinary citizen, empowered through social media tools, can now become an active watchdog. A role once limited to the media as "fourth power" in a democracy (next to judicial, executive, and legislative branch in the government).

My license renewal is up soon. Let's see if it's going to be thumbs up or down at taopo.org this time.