By Computerworld Philippines Staff
December 1, 2008

Over the last couple of decades, technology has dramatically earned a strategic place in the enterprise, with a growing percentage of local companies’ budgets being allotted to their ever-expanding ICT investments. In the government sector, however, ICT systems are not growing as robustly.

Although the public sector may be as aware and as interested in new technologies and innovations as private firms, government institutions often have to make do with whatever modest budgets are approved for their IT initiatives. Interestingly, this does not hinder many government offices from constantly looking at ways to incorporate ICT into their operations, spurred on by the belief that technology is one of the best vehicles for delivering better service to the public.

At Computerworld Philippines’ 10th CIO Roundtable for 2008, four IT officials from different government entities talked about how technology is helping them improve the efficiency of their operations and their delivery of public service, the primary challenges they face in relation to both e-governance and e-government, and what e-governance framework they believe would work best for the country.

Present during the roundtable were: Dr. Hypte “HR” Aujero, assistant program manager, National Telehealth Center; Myra Brucelo, chief of MIS, National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA); lawyer Maverick Sevilla, officer-in-charge of the MIS department, Pasay City government; and Claire Umali, IT division head, Mandaluyong City government.

Also present to give his reactions and insights on the role of ICT in government was Carlo Francis Raymundo, program coordinator of the infrastructure governance and regulation program, Asian Institute of Management Policy Center. The CIO roundtable was held at the Dusit Hotel in Makati City.

Excerpts of the discussion follow:

CWP: How is information technology helping your agency serve the public better? What applications have you deployed that has made a big impact on your dealings with the public?

Sevilla: For the City of Pasay, we have instituted the GEMS (Government Electronic Management System) project and, as a result, various systems, such as the BPLS or Business Permit Licensing System, are now in place. The BPLS is used for the registration and securing of business permits. Pasay actually has 32 systems in place, but the one with the biggest impact is the treasury system which has computerized the collection, as well as the payment, of taxes and other government fees. But for the real thrust of computerization which is e-governance, we are still in the process of getting there. Because as far as the Pasay City government is concerned, there is a big difference between e-governance and e-government. We may have already attained an e-government stature with the many systems we now have in place, but as for e-governance, which involves building relationships not only within the government itself but with the people - our constituents - through technology, we are still going through the process.

Umali: The city government of Mandaluyong began its computerization program about 20 years ago in 1989, starting off with the Business License Tax Administration System. Since all of our computers were just standalone units then, it was only after four years that we started to make improvements on the network. After that, the next systems that we implemented were the payroll for our employee Data Management System and our HR System. We even included a Biometrics Attendance Monitoring System to encourage promptness and attendance among our employees and to discourage absences. Also, we were able to manage our service records well. In the past, only those who were “blessed” were exempted from filing their absences while the rest of the employees, particularly those on the grassroots level, suffered the most. As a solution, we put a Biometrics Attendance Monitoring System in place. However, we are still working to improve the system, which has been running for about three years now. But note that with such a system, we are already able to save around P500,000 a month in salary payouts. More importantly, our casual employees now get their salaries on time, unlike 10 years ago when they often had to contend with salary delays of about five days.

Brucelo: The main thrust of the National Commission on Culture and Arts is to provide public information on culture and the arts in the Philippines. From 1997 – when our MIS team was established – until 2003, the commission only had a static Web site. It just contained text and had no visuals. When I joined the commission in 2002, I encouraged my boss to join the Philippine Web Awards (PWA) and, since 2004, we’ve been a regular contestant of PWA. Because of this, our Web site went through the five stages of development prescribed by the National Computer Center to become an e-commerce and e-government site. And since we had to meet the NCC’s requirements at each stage, we did a lot of dynamic versions. Most of our viewers today are students, researchers, artists, local governments, organizations, and even people of different nationalities.

Dr. Aujero: We are all aware of some of the conditions that prevail in our country today, such as the limited budget allocations for health despite the ballooning population, the dispersal of Filipino doctors and nurses – and all other professionals for that matter – so specialists tend to aggregate in urban areas although we already have lots of specialists there. Most cardiologists, for example, are practicing in the big cities, but there are none in most rural areas. All of these contribute to the dismal Filipino health situation, so what the National Telehealth Center is doing now is come up with a solution or, at least, a part of the solution. Telehealth or E-Health, in a nutshell, is information and communications technology for the delivery of appropriate health services for the underserved. It is an alternative means of delivering health services but it is not the total solution.

At the National Telehealth Center, we use ICT to provide and support healthcare when distance separates the doctors from their patients. It is an alternative means of delivering expert care to underserved communities and geographically remote areas where healthcare expertise is largely unavailable. Created in June 1998 by the UP Board of Regents, NThC’s mission is to increase access to health information and services through ICT with our three arms: E-Medicine, E-Learning and E-Records.

E-Medicine, for instance, is a professional network, but it depends on the available ICT infrastructure, meaning whatever is available in that area, be it the Internet, a cell phone network, or just a two-way radio. It is a combination of the BuddyWorks Project, SMS Telemedicine, and the Telemedicine Project of the Department of Science and Technology. The BuddyWorks Project is an eGovernment Fund-supported telemedicine system that seeks to reduce the inequities in the Philippine health care system. It also helps curb the negative effects of the exodus of health professionals and, more importantly, it connects doctors wherever they are in the country through the DOST’s Telemedicine Project. It uses SMS (cell phone texting), the so-called Lifelink (RxBox computer/laptop) and the ECCS (Emergency Care Coordination System) to make possible real-time teleconsultation.

In 2005, we began this project aimed at giving specialist opinions to four different regions. We selected four project sites in Cagayan Valley, Capiz, Leyte, and Iligan City in Lanao del Norte. The project provides specialist opinions for those areas. It was another eGovernment Fund-assisted project of the CICT (Commission on Information and Communications Technology) and it was funded for about P43 million. The areas were selected by virtue of their remoteness.
E-Learning, meanwhile, refers to the program of upgrading the knowledge of health workers at all levels, from the municipal health office leaders and staff to community health volunteers. E-Records, on the other hand, is an open source-, Web-based electronic health records system for government health centers that quickly and automatically generate standard reports for local, provincial, regional and national use.

CWP: But are these ICT programs really benefiting your constituencies?

Umali: Yes. For instance, since our Business License System was put in place, our generation of business permits as well as the processing of those permits improved. Several years ago, we also included our Treasury office in the system. Previous to this, we did things manually and there were a lot of long queues. But with the establishment of our network, payments to the Treasury are now automatically updated in the database. Payment transactions have become faster and the long rows of people lining up in the Treasury have all been eliminated. Shortly after that development, we went ahead to improve our PATMS or the Property Assessment and Tax Management System.

In 1992, we started our Geographic Information System or GIS. We even got a budget from a congressman. But, unfortunately, nobody was interested in it at the time, and so we were the ones who build everything, like the data layers. Nobody from the Engineering and Planning office picked it up and so the project stagnated and moved very slowly until we finally contracted Geo Data to do GIS for us. But it didn’t provide us any instant relief as it was a very tedious process. We got copies of the land titles and then digitally generated the parcels from the technical descriptions in those titles. But now, we are really able to identify those properties that previously were not being declared to us.

Brucelo: We earn lots of praises but more from foreign nationals than Filipinos. Most of the time, we serve as research aides of foreigners in their search for our national artists. We provide information and we also have a library system. We allow people to browse all the contents of our books through our Web site. We also have an online query facility on Philippine culture. When I arrived in 2002, there was only at dial-up infrastructure at NCCA and we were only allowed to go online from 12 noon to 1 p.m., that was just about 20 hours a month! That was the tedious time before. I even told them that when it comes to PCs, the brand is not that important. I introduced them to open source – the white box computers – and we saved a lot. At that time I think our budget was only P1 million but now we have about P4.8 million. Our main office is in Intramuros and we don’t have a satellite yet or other branches, but we are working through our committees, several of them from the culture and the arts communities – teachers, researchers, journalists and many others. In addition to our online query, we also have an online registry. We invite all local artists from Luzon to Mindanao.

CWP: So your Web site is constantly updated?

Brucelo: Yes. Actually the researchers who query us are not all from cultural organizations. We cater to many LGUs (local government units) and the broadcasting networks which are really dependent on us for information. We are inter-related with DepEd (Department of Education) and CHED (Commission on Higher Education). Right now, what we have is a database-driven Web site, so a lot of the updating work involves digitalization of data. We already started the e-books. These deal with the timeline of the development of Philippine culture as well as other information on the country’s culture and arts. A log of e-books now is available online and we are upgrading the connection from dial-up to DSL. But the objective really is to have a one-on-one connection like the E-Meralco facility. We are trying all these now and we hope to have a wireless connectivity by December but this is still under the bidding process.

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