CWP: And is outsourcing working for you?

Pio de Roda: So far it’s ok. We had a summit meeting on this between the BIR, Bureau of Customs, Department of Finance, and World Bank. By the time we completed the project in 1999, we knew that people will leave already because there is no more challenge for them—the system has been developed already. Though we wanted to keep them, the salary we gave them was too low. Outside they can demand 10 times their BIR salary. These are Oracle analyst programmers. We are a government agency not a government corporation so we cannot standardize the salary. It would be nationwide and more expensive if there is salary standardization across government agencies. So I think we were the first government agency to outsource and we are still outsourcing. So that solves some of our manpower requirements.

The problem is the integration between government agencies. It is very hard to link them. Besides the technical, the standards are not the same. It’s also political. But I think there is now a pending Executive Order from the President mandating all government agencies to work together especially with BIR. Because we need to improve our collection.

Diaz de Rivera: We have laws that are obscure. There’s a law that prohibits, say, SSS from disclosing information to other agencies about their members. Even the courts will not disclose member information because it is prohibited by law.

Pio de Roda: We don’t need the salary information about their members. We just want to know the name and date of birth. Getting that information is very difficult without the cooperation of other agencies.

Yap: The challenges we encounter in planning and development are several. First is the commitment of the business areas. The workload of the process experts (end user representatives) was not reduced preventing them from attending the workshops, meetings and other development activities all the time. Second is the coordination among funding agencies (lending institutions). There were occasions when projects funded by another lending institution overlapped with the projects already funded by a lending institution.

As for implementation, the challenge is change management. There is resistance, in varying degrees, in the use of the new tools. Involvement in the design, and classroom and on-the-job trainings on the use of the new tools are not enough to motivate the process owners to use these new tools. There should have been more interventions for change management that would have motivated the process owners to greater heights to use the tools because no matter how streamlined are the processes, no matter how state-of-the-art are the equipment and technology, if the human resources will not use these, then the investments are wasted.

There are basically two challenges encountered both in the planning and implementation. First is the high rate of turnover for IT personnel. Expertise and specialization are very difficult to build because IT personnel just stay for an average of three years. Second is sustainability. Lending institutions do not fund the maintenance of the hardware and software. Thus, we have to charge this from the maintenance allocation of the Department, which most of the time insufficient considering the cost of maintaining our vast IT infrastructure including the leased lines, and the cost of software licenses.

Panganiban: Like BIR, procurement is a challenge. Fast turnover of IT personnel is also a problem. It’s difficult to find people because the salary we offer is really low. So what we just tell those who leave for better salaries elsewhere is to make sure they do the proper turnovers.

Favis: For Marikina, all our employees are on a contractual basis. They get a three-month contract.

CWP: How do you deal with continuity?

Favis: We just renew there contract every three months until they finish the project. There are some who have stayed with us for as long as three years already. You can keep the salary low with contractual.

Yap: And you are able to keep them?

Favis: Not always. We’ve had at least three turnovers already. Most of them move to a call center or go abroad. So in the planning stage alone we have to consider all the possible problems. First is the issue on the platform. That has been an issue in most conferences. There should be a common platform among all agencies. Another problem is the applications. Most local government cannot afford the software that is being sold to them. So what we did was to outsource. However, the company did not deliver. So now we prefer in-house developers so when we need to customize an application we can do it right away because the source code is with us. Unlike if you outsource, every time there are changes that need to be made, you have to pay the service provider. In fact, we had a developer who couldn’t finish the project because it was a big task. We asked them to develop 30 modules but they couldn’t finish it in three years.

Budget is also a problem for Marikina. Our IT budget is only P5 million a year. Actually, it has decreased because last year our budget was P10 million. Unlike Makati which has a bigger budget.

Panganiban: Our IT budget is about 2% of P7.6 billion. Imagine maintaining your own Web portal, your own data center. We don’t outsource our data center.

Pio de Roda: BIR’s budget is not even close to 1% of P730 billion. Our experience with change management is 70% turnaround, especially in technical.

Panganiban: May I answer the question regarding the feedback of our constituency? In our case, it’s a mixed reaction. Those who pay their taxes right, the feedback has been positive. Those who don’t pay right are complaining.

Favis: For Marikina, the common reaction is “why has the tax increased?” Most of them attributed this to the computerization of the city hall. Delinquent payers are the ones who are not happy with the computerization.

CWP: In general do you think the government is now more willing to spend in automation or e-governance?

Pio de Roda: Our case is different because we are an income generating agency.

Tim De Rivera: Generally the lip service is there, that IT is the driver. But there are causes in government that really inhibit the sourcing of funds, and its not just ICT projects.

When we found out that we have problems with the funding of the ICT projects we went to NEDA. But they took a look at their own strategic planning, the MTPDP (Medium Term Philippine Development Plan). They first identify the priority projects then they look at the budget. So if you’re an agency looking for funding, you will not get it because it may not be in the list of priority projects. So agencies end up looking for ODA funds for their projects. That’s why we’re looking at how we can streamline the budgeting process so that resources can be allocated to strategic projects. Now that there is the E-VAT we’re able to scale some of our funding for investment purposes. We need to do this process engineering to make sure that we’re able to allocate more resourcues.

CWP: So you’re saying we’re in the process of streamlining that?

Diaz de Rivera: Yes. It’s a project within the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) and House. There should be a conscious effort to review the priority projects for funding.

Yap: We spent approximately P2 billion from 1997 to 2007 for the development and installation alone of the applications enabling the enhanced processes, and for equipment procurement. The DPWH has an approximately P40 billion allocation every year and with this figure the government, in my opinion, is still conservative in allocating funds for IT projects.

CWP: What is your organization’s future plan or plans for eGovernance? If you were to be given a budget that you need, what would be your “dream eGovernance project?”

Pio de Roda: Eliminate all the paper forms. That means we go fully electronic with the filing and payment system, which will improve our response time; because it’s like this, if you have a paper return, you pay at the bank. The fastest it would take us to put that in the file is probably six months. That is if it is validated, because if it’s not validated for one reason or another, we cannot go back to the taxpayer to correct it; that would be suspended forever—that will not be in the ledger. If we check our files, what we’ll find is that you did not file. Now if it’s through electronic filing, it goes directly to your file and register in the ledger. There’s only one tax ledger for each taxpayer, it covers all the periods of the taxes. So hopefully, we’ll get there.

Panganiban: Personally, my dream project would be a virtual Makati City Hall providing access to City Hall services anywhere, anytime—so that even when you’re outside the Philippines, you can pay your taxes.

Pio de Roda: Right now, we have that—the electronic filing and payment system. You can file and pay even when you’re in the US, in Saudi Arabia. In fact, it gives you a time difference advantage when it comes to your deadline.

Diaz de Rivera: Going above these day-to-day concerns, my dream before 2010 would probably be to properly automate our elections because the reasons are really profound. If we can prove to the world that we have credible elections, we can have more people coming in to invest in the country, we can build up the country. That’s the big challenge ahead of us.

Yap: Continue the business process improvements being done at the DPWH; continue the development of applications that will enable these improvements; continue the procurement of associated hardware and software; and maximize the use of IT (such as electronic bidding) to attain the objectives.

My short-range dream is an IT-enabled DPWH, such as integrated databases for all applications, seamless applications from infrastructure planning, design, construction, maintenance, including all support processes.

My vision for the entire government bureaucracy is a single government portal where the citizenry can go to every time they have to transact business with the government. They don’t have to travel from one government office to another.

CWP: Timmy, what was that government portal that you launched in Cebu?

Diaz de Rivera: That’s the start of what we’re hoping would be something like Ms. Yap mentioned—the e-services plus payment gateway. What we launched in Cebu is the payment gateway which will allow all government agencies to provide their services and allow payment processes to happen. You know even the small local government units also want to their services online—collect taxes, pay fees. This payment gateway will allow them to do this.

Pio de Roda: Won’t this duplicate what we did?

Diaz de Rivera: Well, in a way, it will duplicate what you did. At BIR it’s justifiable to have your own payment gateway since you have a very large application, you handle lots of processes. What we launched is exactly the same system, we even have the same supplier for the payment engine, but like I said our target is to provide the same thing that the big agencies have to the small agencies, especially the LGUs.

Favis: All their dream plans are basically my dream plans, too. Marikina also wants to be interactive, from being transactional. It is our belief that the best city hall is where no people go.

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