Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Philippines Plans For Unified GIS

Ivan John Uy, Chairman, Philippine Commission on ICT (CICT), proposed that Philippine government agencies should come up with a unified GIS so geospatial information will be available to the different government sectors for more effective decision-making and better streamline of public services and to bring about cost savings.

Uy was in an interview with FutureGov. He said, “Other government departments are using their own GIS, they are getting budget for it. In fact, if budget are put together and come up with a single GIS and everybody will just populate their own then it would have been simplified and information would have been easily shared.”

With a unified GIS, the government will maximise the power of the GIS instead of having islands of information, he added. The CICT has a budget of Php53 million (USD 1.2 million) which is only “about the budget of medium-sized barangay”, Uy continued.

The national government has allocated Php 1 billion (USD 23 million) as the e-government fund. In addition, Uy informed that the Commission on Election, Social Security Services, National Bureau of Investigation, and Philippine National Police, for instance, has their own biometric capture system.

In an effort to improve government interoperability, the CICT has develop applications for e-Business Permits and Licensing System (e-BPLS) and Real Property Tax System (e-RPTS) on open source and deployed them for free to the local government units. Around 200 local municipalities have already adopted e-BPLS and e-RPTS, said Uy. There are 1,600 municipalities in the Philippines.

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