General Auditing Office

Also known as: GAO · Office of the Auditor for the Philippine Islands (1899–1901) · Bureau of the Insular Auditor (1901–1905) · Bureau of Audits (1905–1935) · General Auditing Office of the Philippines

Government

Definition

The General Auditing Office (GAO) was the Philippines’ national audit institution for most of the twentieth century — the constitutional office, headed by an Auditor General, that the 1935 Constitution expressly created with the duty to “examine, audit, and settle all accounts pertaining to the revenues and receipts from whatever source” of the government, its provinces and municipalities, and to keep the general accounts of the Government and preserve its vouchers. The GAO was the direct institutional ancestor of today’s Commission on Audit (COA): its own lineage ran from the Office of the Auditor created by the American military government in 1899, through the Bureau of the Insular Auditor and the Bureau of Audits of the Philippine Commission era. (1935 Constitution, Article XI, COA — History, Wikipedia — Commission on Audit)

The Office was established by Article XI of the 1935 Constitution as a one-person constitutional body: an Auditor General appointed by the President with the consent of the Commission on Appointments for a term of ten years without reappointment, removable only by impeachment, and constitutionally obliged to report to the President and the Congress on the Government’s “financial condition and operations” and to bring to the proper administrative officer every expenditure he deemed “irregular, unnecessary, excessive, or extravagant.” The 1973 Constitution abolished the arrangement, replacing the single-headed GAO with the collegial, three-member Commission on Audit. (1935 Constitution, Article XI, 1973 Constitution, Article XII, COA — History)

Identities

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Wikidata	General Auditing Office (Q126914807)
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Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings	N/A
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Also Known As

GAO
Office of the Auditor for the Philippine Islands (1899–1901)
Bureau of the Insular Auditor (1901–1905)
Bureau of Audits (1905–1935)
General Auditing Office of the Philippines

Examples and Analogies

One judge versus a bench: the GAO concentrated the audit power in one official — the Auditor General — much as a trial court rests on a single judge; the 1973 Constitution converted that single judgeship into a three-member collegiate commission, the audit equivalent of moving from a one-justice court to a bench. (1935 Constitution, Article XI, 1973 Constitution, Article XII)
Lineage ladder: each renaming marked a regime change in the same institution — Office of the Auditor under military government, Bureau of the Insular Auditor under civil government, Bureau of Audits under the Philippine Commission’s Act No. 1402, General Auditing Office under the 1935 Constitution, and Commission on Audit under the 1973 Constitution — the office kept its function while changing its constitutional clothing. (COA — History, Wikipedia — Commission on Audit)
The ten-year lock: the Auditor General’s ten-year non-renewable term, matched in the 1935 Constitution’s design with a salary that could not be diminished, was an early Filipino experiment in insulating an accountability official from the appointing power — the ancestor of the fixed staggered terms of today’s constitutional commissions. (1935 Constitution, Article XI)

Usage Scenarios

1. Settlement of Government Accounts

As the government’s settlement authority, the Auditor General examined, audited, and settled all accounts of revenues and receipts, including trust funds from bond issues, and audited all expenditures of funds or property held by the Government, provinces, and municipalities — the same settle-all-accounts mandate that Article IX-D of the 1987 Constitution now vests in the Commission on Audit. (1935 Constitution, Article XI, COA — History)

2. Guardian Against Improvident Spending

The Auditor General was the era’s instrument for flagging wasteful public spending: the Constitution required him to bring to the proper administrative officer any expenditure he deemed “irregular, unnecessary, excessive, or extravagant” — the four adjectives that PD No. 1445 and the 1987 Constitution would later carry forward (the 1987 text adds “unconscionable”) as the standard for audit disallowance. (1935 Constitution, Article XI, PD No. 1445)

3. Custodian of the Government’s Books

The Office kept the general accounts of the Government and preserved the vouchers supporting them — the accounting function that made the GAO both auditor and bookkeeper of record, a combination the 1973 and 1987 Constitutions handed down to the Commission on Audit. (1935 Constitution, Article XI, COA — History)

Strategies

Trace the paper trail: researchers tracking pre-1973 audit disputes work through the GAO’s decisions and annual reports to the President and Congress, the era’s equivalent of today’s COA decisions and annual financial reports. (1935 Constitution, Article XI)
Follow the instruments: historians of Philippine public accountability date the office’s stages by legal instruments rather than by buildings — the 1899 memorandum of President McKinley, Act No. 1402 (1905), Article XI of the 1935 Constitution, and Article XII of the 1973 Constitution — each instrument marking a transfer of the audit function to a differently designed body. (COA — History)
Compare constitutions: students contrast the 1935 single-headed, ten-year-tenured Auditor General with the 1973 and 1987 collegial commissions to see how Filipino constitutional designers balanced independence (longer tenure, one head) against deliberation and checks (three heads, staggered terms). (1935 Constitution, Article XI, 1973 Constitution, Article XII)

Security and Safety Measures

Constitutional rank and tenure: by writing the Office into the 1935 Constitution with a ten-year non-renewable term and non-diminishing salary, the framers placed the auditor beyond easy removal — and made the Auditor General impeachable, removable only by the gravest process. (1935 Constitution, Article XI)
Mandatory reporting: the duty to report annually to the President and Congress on the Government’s financial condition subjected the entire public sector’s books to periodic public accounting. (1935 Constitution, Article XI)
Audit escalation: decisions of the Auditor General were appealable — to the President, whose action was final, or, for private parties, to a court of record — building a review layer atop the audit judgment. (1935 Constitution, Article XI)
Codified successor rules: the accountability machinery the GAO pioneered — settlement of accounts, the four-adjective standard against wasteful spending — was codified in PD No. 1445 and constitutionalized again in 1987, so the safeguards survived the office that invented them. (PD No. 1445, COA — History)

Historical Context

Auditing under Spain belonged to the Tribunal de Cuentas, the supreme auditing institution of the Spanish regime until 1898. American rule began the Philippine audit office’s documented life on May 8, 1899, when President William McKinley’s unnumbered memorandum to the Secretary of War directed “the establishment of the Office of the Auditor for the Philippine Islands”; the office became a fixture of the insular government in 1900, and with the establishment of civil government in 1901 it was converted into the Bureau of the Insular Auditor. Under Act No. 1402 of the Philippine Commission, approved November 2, 1905, the Bureau of the Insular Auditor was renamed the Bureau of Audits, the name it bore until the Commonwealth era. (COA — History)

The 1935 Constitution elevated the audit office to constitutional rank as the General Auditing Office with an Auditor General at its head — Jaime Hernandez, appointed in 1935, was its first Filipino Auditor General, and Ismael Mathay Sr. (January 23, 1965 – September 19, 1975) its last. The GAO carried the audit function through the Commonwealth and the postwar republic until the constitutional transition of the martial-law years: the 1973 Constitution created the Commission on Audit — a Chairman and two Commissioners, certified public accountants or lawyers of at least ten years’ standing, with seven-year terms — replacing the single Auditor General. In 1978, Presidential Decree No. 1445 codified the new Commission’s powers, and in 1987 the restored democratic Constitution retained the Commission under Article IX-D with strengthened autonomy, closing the GAO’s line of succession in the body that audits the government today. (COA — History, Wikipedia — Commission on Audit, 1973 Constitution, Article XII, PD No. 1445)

Challenges and Controversies

The Single-Head Design

The GAO’s single-headed leadership made the audit power strong but concentrated: everything depended on the independence and vigor of a single Auditor General. The 1973 shift to a three-member collegial commission diffused that power among a Chairman and two Commissioners — a design change adopted in a constitution ratified during the martial-law period, a circumstance that sits uneasily beside the strengthening of an accountability body. (1935 Constitution, Article XI, 1973 Constitution, Article XII)

Appeals to the President

Under the 1935 Constitution the Auditor General’s decisions were appealable to the President, whose action was final — an arrangement that subordinated the era’s chief auditor, in the last resort, to the very executive whose expenditures he audited, a structural tension the 1973 and 1987 Constitutions resolved by making the Supreme Court, through certiorari, the reviewing authority instead. (1935 Constitution, Article XI, 1973 Constitution, Article XII)

Audit Under Martial Law

The GAO’s final years coincided with the declaration of martial law in 1972, and the office passed out of existence through the 1973 constitutional transition rather than by any ordinary statute: the 1973 Charter created the Commission on Audit without naming the old office, leaving the transfer to the general transitory rules for reorganized offices. (COA — History, 1973 Constitution, Article XII)