IT upgrade plan for gov’t agencies announced

The government is planning to spend at least P1 billion a year until 2016 for the modernization of all state agencies using technology to deliver better and faster services to the public.

The Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) on Wednesday unveiled its Philippine Digital Strategy (PDS), which outlined government initiatives in the field of technology over the next five years.

The PDS’ main thrust, CICT officials said, is to have a more transparent government and ensure effective delivery of services to Filipinos and local businesses. The plan also aims to restore the public’s “trust in the government by making data publicly available.”

“If you look at the budget of the government, there are several ICT projects but they are spread out. Our role is to bring them together,” CICT Secretary Ivan Uy said in a briefing.

He said that at the moment, the delivery of government services remains constrained by inefficiencies due to the manual processing of transactions and poor record keeping.

The few agencies that have their own computer systems maintain their records separate from other agencies that process the same exact data. These include offices like the Commission on Elections, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Land Transportation Office.

Uy said the CICT would start with the stricter enforcement of its mandate of being the approving authority for information technology (IT) master-plans of all government agencies.

Uy said these data “silos” have resulted in duplication work to collect data from private citizens that may already be held and could simply be borrowed from other agencies.