By Tom S. Noda
Published in the CWP February 2010 issue
If there is one government institution that hungrily feeds on technology just to provide innovative public services anytime, anywhere, it would be the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).
With over half a trillion pesos in asset base, GSIS claims to rival some of the biggest financial institutions in the Philippines and has implemented certain technologies even before they were deployed by large private banks and companies.
Winston Garcia, president and general manager of GSIS, launched his mandate of “service anytime, anywhere” for the fund agency when he was appointed by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2001. Though the slogan appeared plain and simple, Garcia’s vision would involve enormous IT tasks, which led to high-tech service innovations and breakthroughs in government and even outdating technologies used by the private sector.
Among the technologies implemented by the GSIS are a centralized database system, business intelligence, Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID), the GSIS Voice Activated Processing System (GVAPS), GSIS Wireless Automated Processing System or GW@PS kiosk, and the eCard Plus.
However, in its attempt to achieve its vision of “service anytime, anywhere” for its members and pensioners, GSIS sailed through rough waters.
In 2004, GSIS began migrating to a new computerized system—with an IBM DB2 software designed to manage all data pertaining to members’ and pensioners accounts. GSIS claims it spent around P40 million for the DB2 software and IBM P-series servers. Unfortunately, in March and April 2009, the database software encountered a problem with the pension firm’s Integrated Loans, Membership, Acquired Assets and Accounts Management System (ILMAAAMS).
The ILMAAAMS, which ran on IBM’s DB2 database software, reportedly crashed because of the vast amount of transactions made by GSIS members, composed of about 1.5 million government employees and 200,000 pensioners. This translates to about three million records on file coming from 8,000 agencies nationwide.
GSIS says about 90% of its operations were adversely affected by the crash—suffering about Php5 billion in actual damages. It blamed IBM for the disruptions, accusing it of supplying defective database software. For its part, Big Blue says it has no service contract with GSIS since the software was bought through a global OEM arrangement with German software firm SAP.
GSIS slapped a Php100 million legal case versus IBM Philippines who later filed a Php200 million libel suit against the former for its series of so-called negative advertisements against them, both in print and broadcast media. The legal wars continue as of writing.
Not wanting to be coiled in the controversy, several of GSIS’ IT officers and personnel resigned, citing different reasons. The exodus left the GSIS IT plantilla understaffed prompting management to hire from the private sector.
MEN IN BLACK
Because of its problems with its IT infrastructure and organization, GSIS recruited five experts from prominent private companies to provide best practices and solutions that would once-and-for-all solve its highprofile IT dilemma. The group earned the nickname “Men in Black” (MIB) as they all wore black suits coincidentally when they were presented to the GSIS board of trustees in mid 2009.
The recruits were: Henry Aguda, chief technology officer/ SVP of the IT Services Group; Philip Evangelista, IT Officer V, Core Business System Office; David Medel, head of OVP for IT infrastructure Office; Noli Subingsubing, IT Officer 5, office of the VP for it operations; and Jonathan Pineda, Information
Security Officer (ISO).
Also called the “IT Boys,” all five used to hold IT executive positions in prestigious private firms, such as Aguda from Digitel, Fujitsu, Nextel, Bayantel and Meralco; Evangelista from HP and Oracle; Medel from Standard Chartered Bank, Security Bank, Bank of the Philippine Islands, City Trust, and NCR; Subingsubing from the BPO group Sutherland Global; and Pineda who moved from Chinatrust Bank and other foreign banks.
The IT officers share they were expecting a “nightmare” when they decided to accept the IT challenge at GSIS, particularly the transfer of the fund agency’s IBM-DB2 software to HP-Oracle. It was a move pegged to solve the problem of GSIS from its IBM database system. In contrast, the IT Boys say they are now living a “fairy tale” working within GSIS, describing the people there as very supportive with high professional work ethics.
THE MISSION
During an interview with Computerworld Philippines, Aguda said some of the significant parts of their mission have already been accomplished, such as the establishment of a new IT organization and the migration from IBM DB2 to Oracle-HP within 2009. Other important tasks that have yet to be completed are the creation of a new data center in 2010 and the fixing of other pieces of the system also within the year.
“We came here because of the challenges; we were expecting a nightmare. But now we’re living a fairy tale,” Aguda says, adding when they got on board, the organization was less than 40 people it normally had. There was no CTO and VPs. The ISO, which Pineda now leads is a new organization created for information security.
Having the organizational issue solved, the group successfully migrated from the old IBM boxes to the new HP Integrity Superdome Server on December 3, 2009, more than one month after they started the migration. Pineda notes that eight terabytes of data was migrated during the process.
“So far, we can sleep easier at night,” says Aguda. “We have people trained on maintaining the system; and the partners that we have—people from Oracle and HP—are committed to making sure that we don’t run into any more problems. We’re now moving into a phase where we want to normalize and regularize the operations.”
Subingsubing adds that another aspect of the mission is to basically get everybody familiar with the new technologies and the centralized service desk. “We would like the service desk to really evolve into a fully functional action desk. That’s basically what service is all about—an action in answer to a request, query, or a complaint.”
Garcia acknowledged the group during the pension fund’s Christmas party describing the GSIS operations to have gone a 180-degree turn since the second quarter of 2009.
Yet the IT officers say the biggest challenge they have today is to enable the nature of service the GSIS provides, which is of national interest.
“We are here not only to stabilize the system. We’re also here to implement industry best practices that are being implemented in private organizations. So more than just standardizing the processes, we’re here to make GSIS a better institution,” Medel says.
TRIED AND TESTED
The group’s glamorous distinction of MIB and IT Boys was put to the test during the onslaught of typhoon Ondoy in October 2009.
GSIS, averaging less than 1000 loan processes per day, was given orders by President Macapagal-Arroyo to process loans of applying members within an average of three to four working days only. The group was able to process more than 240,000 applications in one month “There was a peak of 18,000 applications in one day in that month and we averaged like 10,000 processes per day and we haven’t done a lot of fixing on the system yet. So we monitored the system literally 24 hours a day,” Aguda says.
GSIS was able to release about Php5 billion in October 2009. The new IT team deployed 10 kiosk in several malls and had a 98% availability time.
Aguda adds their 21-week migration schedule was even suddenly cut down to six weeks because of the urgency brought on by the catastrophe. The migration time was a phenomenon the GSIS partners themselves couldn’t believe possible.
“Our partners couldn’t believe that it could be done. Well, we in IT have this tendency that we like it when people tell us it can’t be done. And we’ll do it,” quips Aguda. “I believe we have already stabilized the system and the next goal is to really get us to the level of sophistication where we can be true to our PGM’s vision of GSIS service anywhere, anytime. And we expect to do that in the next six months.”
IT BREAKTHROUGHS
When he was installed as president and general manager in 2001, Garcia saw the need to bring all the information and application from the field to the main office, giving one view of the data instead of having multiple formats per branch. As a solution, a centralized database was created, wherein an informational system was established under a data warehousing project.
The centralized database allowed users to make company-wide projections, such as easy planning on what benefits will be given to pensioners. It also enabled them to foresee the company’s budget and income.
In 2008, an executive information system (EIS) was deployed in the central office to enable data mining using a data warehousing software and a relational database. Today, transactional data are downloaded daily on the EIS. The business intelligence function called ETL (or extract, transfer and load) helps in migrating information from a hierarchal to a relational database. BI’s realization proved to be rewarding for GSIS, a complete conversion of its database from a legacy to a Web-based application environment.
Evangelista notes the very reason of such reform is to establish a database of members and rely on it for certification purposes because, in the past, GSIS did not rely on a database.
“Before, what members do is they would go to their HR and get certificates. GSIS would not really know exactly who the person is and what his service records are,” says Evangelista. “But with a database, when a member applies for a loan, we would not rely on paper that’s coming from his agency. We would rely on our own database. In fact, what’s going to happen in the next years is that the agencies will be relying more on the GSIS record than their own, because we are far more advanced than all the other agencies.”
In 2008, GSIS rolled out its eCard Plus and GW@PS kiosk nationwide which signaled a new era of its service to its stakeholders. The eCard Plus serves as an essential component of the GSIS vision of transacting with members and pensioners in a paperless environment—without the usual loan application forms claims forms, copies of service records, NSO certificates, and the like. Among its other goals is to end the tedious process of printing and mailing bank checks for loans, pensions, and other GSIS benefits.
GSIS processes around 10 million checks every year, which costs the government owned corporation up to Php500 million a year—the amount which GSIS could save with its checkless and paperless system.
Unlike ordinary cards, including the old eCard, the eCard Plus contains a microchip, called RFID chip which can do two important things—store information and transmit information to RFID readers using radio frequency.
During the enrollment process for the eCard Plus, members and pensioners provide the GSIS not only with basic information but also their biometric records through their fingerprints. These pieces of information are stored in the eCard Plus’ RFID chip.
And if the eCard Plus replicates the member or pensioner, a machine called the GW@PS kiosk, replicates the GSIS. The GW@PS kiosk has three visible parts: the RFID card reader, the touch-screen monitor and the fingerprint scanner.
When a member places his eCard Plus on the card reader, the RFID chip embedded in the card will transmit stored information to the RFID card reader, allowing the GW@PS kiosk to recognize the member. This will now allow members and pensioners to transact with the GSIS without the need to go to the GSIS office.
Also recently, the pension loan was made available through the GW@PS kiosk. Old-age pensioners are now able to apply for a pension loan using their eCard Plus on the GW@PS booths.
In May 2008, the Philippine government claimed to have pioneered a technology service breakthrough with the launch of a voice biometrics service offered by GSIS called GVAPS—a service that makes a member’s voice his virtual signature similar to fingerprints, hair strand or eye iris recognition.
Garcia claims that the GVAPS is possibly the first of its kind in the world. With the service, he says that the GSIS has truly lived up to its slogan of making its services available to their 1.5 million members/pensioners anytime and anywhere, 24 x 7. GVAPS has sophisticated security layers wherein it can identify the unique characteristic of voices even in “hoarse” conditions and also tape-recorded ones.
Garcia, in previous interviews with Computerworld Philippines, claims that GVAPS is a “homegrown” IT project and not a single foreign consultant was hired.
He says about Php600 million was spent for the project which began in 2003 when GSIS started automating its systems.
Simultaneous with the GVAPS launch was the creation of the “ATM Ng Bayan” (ATM of the Country)—a partnership between GSIS and the Philippine Postal Corp. (PhilPost). The concept was meant to address issues of claiming cash loans in remote areas where there are no automated teller machines available. The goal is to deploy 3,000 ATM Ng Bayan in different PhilPost sites nationwide.
A Different Calling
The MIB or IT Boys of GSIS share that working in government is a totally different calling. If their mission in private companies before was to enable profitability, today the name of the game is “public service.”
“Working in government is definitely new to us but not new in terms of what we do technically. But now the stakeholders are our members and that’s a different challenge,” says Jonathan Pineda, information security officer (ISO) of GSIS.
For his part, Henry Aguda, chief technology officer/SVP of the IT Services Group, says he is now working for the bottom line.
“Here, we work for the national interest and that should be a much higher calling,” Aguda says. “I’ve spent 20 plus years in my IT career already and I’ve worked for people whose bottom line is the profit line. In GSIS, the bottom-line is the quality of service we give to our members.
The psychic reward of knowing that my team is working to serve people is immeasurable. I go home satisfied and happy.”
Similarly, David Medel, head of OVP for IT infrastructure Office, viewed that joining GSIS had given him a new sense of pride by contributing to the improvement of service for the welfare of its members/pensioners. “It’s very fulfilling knowing that even faced with a challenge, we are still able to provide the service that our stakeholders need. It may look like improvements may take awhile to happen but we are moving forward to fulfill the GSIS vision of, “Kahit Saan, Kahit Kailan, Maasahan.”
Noli Subingsubing, IT Officer 5, office of the VP for it operations, meanwhile, says it’s a happy mix of both IT and users alike in GSIS. “Here, the systems are successful because the users give also their inputs to it. They allotted time for it, test it, and go overnight with us when we were fixing it, everything. They really embraced it.”
Philip Evangelista, IT Officer V, Core Business System Office adds: “There’s no turf here. In other companies, IT does the lead and users follow. In some cases, the users are leading and IT is just relegated to provide support. Here, whether it is day or night, the users and IT are there together. When we had this emergency and we called for them to be here on Halloween at 10PM, they were here! No questions asked. And these are SVPs. In here, it’s like everybody wants to succeed.”
As to the group being tagged as “MIB” and “IT Boys,” the IT officers say they would rather be labeled as “service providers” who accommodate users.
The group says it is high time for government to really invest more in IT—just like GSIS, which believes in the power of what IT can do.—Tom S. Noda
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