Davao del Norte was included in the country's bandwagon of good governance after the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) declared it has met all the criteria of the 2017 Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) award.

The agency issued a Certificate of Recognition, which was dated December 15, 2017, certifying the Province of Davao del Norte "passed the parameters” for the much- coveted Seal, though it only satisfied all the requirements after the assessment period.

This implies the province eventually passed the recognition’s core criteria, to include financial administration, disaster preparedness, social protection, and peace and order, while also meeting the essential areas of either business friendliness and competitiveness, tourism, culture and the arts, and environmental protection.

Davao del Norte now joins seven other provinces of Mindanao, together with its own municipalities of Braulio E. Dujali and Kapalong, as SGLG awardees of last year.

It can be recalled that the DILG initially dropped the province from receiving the recognition after the province failed alone in meeting the criterion on the presence of a plantilla position for the local disaster risk reduction management officer.

Governor Anthony del Rosario revealed that the province was only able to comply the said criterion last December, since it was still on the tedious process of total reorganization during the assessment period from August to September 2017.

Local Government Undersecretary Austere Panadero informed the governor that the department came up with a certification policy to award the 2017 SGLG Post-Conferment Qualifier award to LGUs that exerted efforts in meeting all the SGLG criteria until December of last year.

However, Panadero made it clear that the late qualifier LGUs are no longer entitled to the SGLG Marker and the Performance Challenge Fund (PCF).

He added that the province is only eligible for the 2017 Good Financial Housekeeping Certification, in order to secure access to national program windows. 

The SGLG was launched in 2014 as a scaled up version of the Seal of Good Housekeeping “to provide a greater challenge for the LGUs to continue their good governance practices while providing better services, and at the same time, expanding the coverage of the assessment.”