SGLG is the Department of the Interior and Local Government's report card for Philippine LGUs, established under RA 11292 (Seal of Good Local Governance Act of 2019). It uses an "all-in" design — an LGU must pass every governance area, starting with Financial Administration and Sustainability. Passing unlocks the Performance Challenge Fund. Most failures are not about performance — they're about missing documentary evidence. (The CY2025 assessment was deferred under DILG MC 2025-032.)
The Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) is the Philippine government's performance assessment for cities, municipalities, and provinces, established under Republic Act 11292 (Seal of Good Local Governance Act of 2019). Administered by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), SGLG validates whether an LGU has met minimum standards across a set of governance areas that change slightly each cycle but follow a stable structure.
Note (June 2026): The CY2025 SGLG assessment was deferred under DILG Memorandum Circular 2025-032 while DILG reprograms the assessment criteria. The areas and thresholds below describe the established SGLG structure and may be revised before the next cycle resumes.
SGLG uses an "all-in" design: an LGU must pass every governance area to receive the seal — clearing nine of ten is still a fail. The ten assessment areas are:
For LGU officials, SGLG is the most visible and most consequential annual scorecard. SGLG passage is a political asset for incumbents, a recruitment signal for senior staff, and the gateway to the Performance Challenge Fund — which provides grants for high-priority programs. Failure has the inverse effect.
The dirty secret of SGLG: most failures are not performance failures. The LGU did the work. The disaster plan exists. The annual financial report is filed. The youth council met. But when the validator asks for a specific resolution, the meeting minutes, the dated evidence, the citation by indicator number — the documentation is not where it needs to be.
This is the "documentation scramble." Departments share folders by email and Viber. Resolutions live in three different binders. Last year's evidence is in someone's drive that left the office. Validators arrive, ask for evidence on indicator 3.2.4, and the LGU spends three weeks chasing what should have been a 30-second answer.
Nova Gov continuously tracks every SGLG indicator the LGU is assessed on. Reports, resolutions, plans, and validation documents are tagged by indicator number on intake, archived in a structured repository, and surfaced as a readiness checklist months before the validation visit. The validator asks for indicator 3.2.4; the CPDO or the mayor's office pulls it in seconds.
SGLG passage stops being a documentation scramble and becomes a routine check.
SGLG and land-use planning overlap. An SGLG indicator typically checks whether the LGU has an updated Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) and integrated zoning ordinance — the LGU's obligation under the Local Government Code (RA 7160), Executive Order No. 72 (s. 1993), and the DHSUD-regulated CLUP process (RA 11201, DHSUD Act of 2019). An LGU with a lapsed or unratified CLUP often also fails the relevant SGLG area. The reverse holds too: SGLG-aligned documentation makes DHSUD CLUP review faster.
Nova Gov tracks SGLG evidence as a continuous workflow, not a once-a-year scramble. First cohort of LGUs gets it free.
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