Government audit reports are some of the most important — and most underread — documents in Philippine public life. The official Commission on Audit (COA) reports run hundreds of pages, are released as scanned PDFs, and are notoriously hard to navigate on a smartphone.
A new public reader at Kuryente News has taken the COA Annual Audit Report 2024 on the Province of Negros Oriental and made it searchable, page by page, on any phone — without modifying or summarising the original document. The original PDF is preserved unchanged, and a SHA-256 checksum is published on the page so anyone can verify the file matches the COA original.
How to use the reader
- Open the page on your phone: kuryentenews.com/transparency/coa/negros-oriental/2024
- Use the search box at the top of the page.
- Type any keyword — a name, a project, a peso amount.
- Tap any result to jump straight to the exact page in the report.
A finding worth searching for
One of the report's most consequential findings appears on page 4. The audit team wrote that ₱5.850 billion in seven infrastructure projects, "which were funded through loans, were neither prepared nor submitted to the Audit Team" — referring to the missing feasibility studies.
Search "feasibility study" inside the report and the result lands on page 4. Try other terms too: "Task Force SAGAR," "El Niño," "disallowances," "20% Development Fund."
📄 Read the full searchable COA report here:
Why this matters
Public records belong to the public. When the source document is hard to read on the device most Filipinos use to consume news — a phone — the documents stay in the hands of specialists. Making them searchable, neutral, and source-faithful is part of the public's right to scrutinise how their money is being spent.
Source: Commission on Audit · Annual Audit Report on the Province of Negros Oriental, for the year ended December 31, 2024.