BSCS Senior Officer Exam cheat sheet

Governance is the exercise of political, economic, and administrative authority to manage a nation's affairs; it includes the mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which citizens articulate interests and exercise rights.

Woodrow Wilson's 1887 essay "The Study of Administration" is conventionally cited as the start of the politics-administration dichotomy, which holds that administration lies outside the proper sphere of politics.

Max Weber's ideal-type bureaucracy has six features: hierarchical authority, division of labor, written rules, impersonal relations, merit-based appointment, and career tenure.

Frederick Taylor's scientific management sought the "one best way" through time-and-motion study; Elton Mayo's Hawthorne studies then showed social and psychological factors drive productivity.

New Public Administration (Minnowbrook, 1968) emphasized social equity and relevance; New Public Management (1980s-1990s) emphasizes managerialism, market mechanisms, and results over process.

Good governance indicators commonly used by the World Bank and UNDP include participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effectiveness, accountability, and efficiency.

The Philippine Local Government Code of 1991 (RA 7160) devolves basic services to LGUs and mandates the share of LGUs in national internal revenue taxes: 23 percent from the third year of effectivity onward.

Key governance doctrines: the public trust doctrine (public office is a public trust under Article XI, Section 1 of the 1987 Constitution) and the doctrine that public officers act as trustees of public resources.

The 1987 Constitution has 18 Articles; Article VI covers the Legislative Department, Article VII the Executive, Article VIII the Judiciary, Article IX the Constitutional Commissions, and Article X Local Government.

Bill of Rights (Article III) due process clauses: no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor denied the equal protection of the laws (Section 1).

The three branches observe separation of powers with checks and balances: the President vetoes bills (Article VI, Section 27), the Court may declare acts unconstitutional, and the Senate confirms appointments.

Article IX creates the Civil Service Commission, Commission on Elections, and Commission on Audit; each is independent, and the CSC is the central personnel agency of the government.

The 1987 Constitution took effect on February 2, 1987, following ratification in the February 2, 1987 plebiscite; it succeeded the 1973 Constitution and the 1986 Provisional Constitution.

Administrative law principles: a valid delegation of legislative power requires a complete statute with a sufficient standard; administrative rules cannot exceed the enabling law.

Administrative due process in disciplinary cases (CSC rules): notice of charges, opportunity to answer, hearing, and decision supported by substantial evidence.

Hierarchy of laws: Constitution, national statutes, treaties (as part of the law of the land), executive issuances, administrative rules, and local ordinances, each subordinate to the higher norm.

Maslow's hierarchy (physiological, safety, social, esteem, self-actualization) and Herzberg's two-factor theory (hygiene factors prevent dissatisfaction; motivators drive satisfaction) are the classic motivation models.

McGregor's Theory X assumes employees avoid work and need control; Theory Y assumes employees seek responsibility and self-direction.

Vroom's expectancy theory: motivation = expectancy x instrumentality x valence; motivation is zero if any factor is zero.

The 2017 Omnibus Rules on Appointments and Other Human Resource Actions (ORAOHRA) and the 2017 Revised Rules on Administrative Cases in the Civil Service (RRACCS) govern CSC appointments and disciplinary procedure.

The CSC's four core values under its Strategic Plan: love of country, integrity, excellence, and professionalism; the CSC also promotes the "Aralin" of servant leadership.

Performance management uses the Strategic Performance Management System (SPMS), which links individual targets to organizational goals through cascading, monitoring, and evaluation.

Learning and development follows the 70-20-10 model: 70 percent on-the-job experience, 20 percent social learning, and 10 percent formal training.

Organizational culture models: Schein's three levels (artifacts, espoused values, basic assumptions) and the competing values framework (clan, adhocracy, market, hierarchy).

Budgeting follows the budget cycle: preparation, legislation (enactment), execution, and accountability (audit and evaluation).

The Philippine budget is prepared on a one-year basis; the fiscal year runs from January 1 to December 31 (Book VI, Administrative Code of 1987).

Budget principles: balance (proposed expenditures do not exceed estimated revenues), comprehensiveness, annuality, and no earmarking of specific revenues for specific purposes, subject to exceptions.

Line-item budgeting controls inputs; performance budgeting links inputs to outputs; program budgeting groups activities by program; zero-based budgeting requires justification of every item from a zero base; PPBS links planning, programming, and budgeting.

The General Appropriations Act (GAA) is the annual budget law; the President submits the budget to Congress within 30 days after the opening of each regular session (Article VII, Section 22).

The pork barrel system was declared unconstitutional in Belgica v. Ochoa (2013), which struck down the Priority Development Assistance Fund and similar lump-sum discretionary funds.

COA's mandate under Article IX-D covers auditing government accounts and promulgating accounting rules; the Commission's decisions may be appealed to the Supreme Court by certiorari.

Fiscal indicators: fiscal deficit = total expenditures minus total revenues; debt-to-GDP ratio measures sustainability; the national government debt stock includes domestic and external obligations.

The policy cycle: agenda setting, policy formulation, adoption/legitimation, implementation, and evaluation, followed by maintenance, succession, or termination.

Kingdon's multiple streams framework: problems, policies, and politics streams converge in a "policy window" under a policy entrepreneur.

Rational-comprehensive model assumes complete information; incrementalism (Lindblom) describes small successive adjustments; the garbage-can model (Cohen, March, Olson) describes organized anarchy.

Program logic model elements: inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes (short-term and long-term), and impacts, connected by assumptions.

SMART criteria for objectives: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Cost-benefit analysis compares discounted benefits to discounted costs; a benefit-cost ratio above 1 or a positive net present value supports the project.

Cost-effectiveness analysis compares the cost per unit of a common outcome across alternatives when benefits cannot be monetized.

Evaluation types: formative (during implementation, for improvement) and summative (at completion, for judgment); process, outcome, and impact evaluations answer different questions.

Measures of central tendency: mean (sum divided by count, sensitive to outliers), median (middle value, robust), and mode (most frequent value).

Measures of dispersion: range, variance (average squared deviation from the mean), and standard deviation (square root of variance).

Normal distribution: approximately 68 percent of values fall within one standard deviation of the mean, 95 percent within two, and 99.7 percent within three.

Sampling: probability methods (simple random, systematic, stratified, cluster) allow inference; non-probability methods (convenience, purposive, quota, snowball) do not support generalization.

The central limit theorem states that the sampling distribution of the mean approaches normality as sample size grows, commonly at n of at least 30.

Type I error rejects a true null hypothesis (alpha); Type II error fails to reject a false null hypothesis (beta); power equals 1 minus beta.

Correlation measures association, not causation; Pearson's r ranges from -1 to 1, and coefficient of determination r-squared is the share of variance explained.

Research designs: experimental (random assignment, causal inference), quasi-experimental (comparison groups without randomization), and non-experimental (descriptive, correlational); validity types include internal, external, construct, and statistical conclusion validity.

The communication process: sender, encoding, message, channel, receiver, decoding, feedback, and noise; noise is any interference that distorts the message.

Directional communication: downward (supervisor to subordinate), upward (subordinate to supervisor), lateral (peer to peer), and diagonal (across levels and functions).

RA 6713 (Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees) sets eight norms: commitment to public interest, professionalism, justness and sincerity, political neutrality, responsiveness to the public, nationalism and patriotism, commitment to democracy, and simple living.

RA 6713 requires public officials to file a Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) within 30 days after assuming office, annually on or before April 30, and within 30 days after leaving office.

RA 3019 (Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act) enumerates corrupt practices, including receiving gifts in connection with official duties and causing undue injury through manifest partiality or bad faith.

The Ease of Doing Business and Efficient Government Service Delivery Act (RA 11032) sets processing times: 3 working days for simple transactions, 7 for complex, and 20 for highly technical ones.

Ethical frameworks: utilitarianism judges acts by consequences (greatest good), deontology by duty and rules (Kant's categorical imperative), and virtue ethics by character traits.

Conflicts of interest arise when personal interest interferes with official duty; RA 6713 requires divestment or resignation from private interests that conflict with official functions.

RA 8792 (E-Commerce Act of 2000) gives legal recognition to electronic documents, signatures, and transactions and penalizes hacking and unauthorized access.

RA 10175 (Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012) penalizes illegal access, interception, data interference, identity theft, and cyber-squatting, among others.

RA 10173 (Data Privacy Act of 2012) requires lawful processing based on consent or other criteria, and creates the National Privacy Commission; personal data must be collected for specified purposes and kept secure.

The Data Privacy Act's data subject rights include information, objection, access, rectification, erasure or blocking, damages, and data portability.

RA 11032 mandates an online 3-day, 7-day, 20-day processing standard and a Zero Contact Policy for simple transactions; agencies must publish a Citizen's Charter.

The Philippine e-Government Master Plan and the DICT (RA 10844, Department of Information and Communications Technology Act of 2015) guide digital transformation of public services.

Information security's CIA triad: confidentiality (authorized access only), integrity (accuracy and completeness), and availability (access when needed).

Digital governance principles: interoperability, open data, shared services, whole-of-government platforms, and identity management (e.g., the Philippine Identification System under RA 11055).

The Philippine Statistics Authority reports GDP growth by expenditure and by industry; inflation is measured through the Consumer Price Index, and the headline rate excludes volatile items in the core measure.

The Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028 targets upper-middle-income status and inclusive growth through the themes of jobs, quality, and sustainability; the socioeconomic agenda is the government's near-term plan.

The Sustainable Development Goals (17 goals, 169 targets, 2030 deadline) replaced the Millennium Development Goals (8 goals, 2015 deadline).

ASEAN has 10 member states; the ASEAN Economic Community (2015) aims for a single market and production base; the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) took effect in 2022.

Deductive reasoning moves from general premises to a specific conclusion (validity concerns form, soundness requires true premises); inductive reasoning generalizes from specific observations.

In syllogisms, a valid form guarantees the conclusion if premises are true; common fallacies include affirming the consequent, denying the antecedent, ad hominem, and straw man.

Logical operators: conjunction (and), disjunction (or), conditional (if-then), and biconditional (if and only if); the contrapositive of "if P then Q" is "if not Q then not P" and is logically equivalent.

Socioeconomic indicators: the Gini coefficient measures income inequality (0 is perfect equality, 1 is perfect inequality); the poverty incidence measures the share of the population below the poverty threshold.

Percentage change = (new value minus old value) divided by old value, multiplied by 100; percentage point difference is the arithmetic difference between two percentages.

Simple interest = principal x rate x time; compound amount = principal x (1 + rate/n)^(n x time), where n is compounding periods per year.

Ratio and proportion: if a:b = c:d then a x d = b x c; for part-to-whole problems, part = whole x (part ratio / total ratio).

Work problems: combined rate = sum of individual rates; if A finishes in a days and B in b days, together they finish in ab/(a+b) days.

Average speed = total distance divided by total time, not the average of the speeds; for equal distances at speeds x and y, average speed = 2xy/(x+y).

Permutations count ordered arrangements (n!/(n-r)!); combinations count unordered selections (n!/(r!(n-r)!)); with repetition, permutations = n^r.

Probability of an event = favorable outcomes divided by total equally likely outcomes; P(A or B) = P(A) + P(B) - P(A and B); independent events multiply.

In series and sequences, arithmetic sequences add a constant difference (nth term = a + (n-1)d); geometric sequences multiply by a constant ratio (nth term = a x r^(n-1)).