For years, Republic Act 7160—better known as the Local Government Code—has been both foundational and formidable for anyone navigating the intricacies of Philippine local governance. From students and SK leaders to aspiring public servants, many refer to it, but few truly grasp its depths. Tech entrepreneur and civic leader Eli Rabadon is changing that, using AI.
Eli, the President-elect of the Rotary Club of Midtown Diliman and a former SK Chairman in Bulacan, recently built a custom GPT on ChatGPT to demystify RA 7160. His goal? To make one of the country’s most important—but often misunderstood—laws more accessible and engaging for ordinary citizens. And remarkably, he did it in less than a day.
“I wanted to make the Local Government Code less intimidating,” Eli shares. “It’s widely cited but rarely understood in full. Using AI, we can break it down for people who need it most—students, LGU officials, and candidates preparing for elections.”
Eli’s project is built on OpenAI’s custom GPT platform, which allows ChatGPT Pro users to create tailor-made AI assistants with specific functions or expertise. “Anyone can make one,” he explains. “You don’t need to be a developer. What you need is clarity—what knowledge are you trying to unlock, and how do you guide the AI to deliver it?”
While there are other platforms out there—like DeepSeek or Claude—Eli chose OpenAI for its ease of deployment and strong support for Philippine-specific contexts. “The interface is clean, the sharing system is intuitive, and it’s already being used by many in the Philippines,” he notes.
I prodded Eli more about this, as I had been toying with archiving The Philippine STAR’s news clippings into a GPT, like a silo-ed AI for research purposes with the newspaper as the primary source. He said that although this is possible, you’re limited by the number of uploads for the Pro version. ChatGPT does allow file uploading, even for the free version, but the consumer paid tiers won’t account for decades of daily PDF files uploaded for training. On a small scale, this works with services like NotebookLM, a Google-led siloed research tool that allows up to 50 sources to be uploaded, whether YouTube links, PDF files, or Google drive documents.
In any case, the response to Eli’s project was immediate. Within just a few days of launch, the GPT-powered tool had reached more than 600,000 people and racked up 1.3 million views and over 14,000 shares on Facebook. The feedback has come from all corners—students, professors, public officials, and everyday citizens hungry for clearer, more digestible civic information.
“I think the reason it resonated is because it filled a gap that’s been there for a long time,” Eli says. “Local governance affects all of us, but most Filipinos haven’t been given the tools to fully understand how it works.”
This fusion of civic engagement and technology is not new territory for Eli. His years in youth leadership and community service gave him firsthand experience of the challenges in local governance. “I’ve seen what’s possible when people understand the system—and how limited we are when we don’t,” he says.
Now, through this project, he’s empowering a new generation of digitally savvy citizens to ask smarter questions, demand more accountability, and engage with the government in meaningful ways.
For Eli, this is only the beginning. “There’s huge potential in applying AI to civic education. Laws shouldn’t feel like secrets written in stone. They should feel like tools anyone can pick up and use.”
In a digital age where information overload is real, Eli Rabadon’s AI tool is a reminder that clarity, relevance, and timing can still cut through the noise—and empower people in the process.
Anyone can access the GPT within ChatGPT, named RA 7160 for free.
