HIGH-RANKING government executives, officials of local government units (LGUs) from across the country as well as international nonprofit agency partners recently converged for a comprehensive interaction and dialog on harnessing the power of information and communications technology (ICT) at the first-ever ICT innovations Forum held at the Hotel Intercontinental.
Globe Telecom, through its newly-formed eGovernment unit (eGov), was a major sponsor of the huge gathering of public sector and government personnel as well as leading local and international private technology firms to exchange technological know-hows on adopting ICT systems, processes and services.
According to Globe Senior Vice President Jesus Romero, Globe eGov was created as the telco company’s response to the call of government for private sector participation. It is now ready to provide first-class ICT facilities to a wide scope of government agencies centered on taxation, procurement, customs, manpower, statistics, business processing and transportation, among many others.
As the head of Globe eGov, he said that, “we are pleased to activate this groundbreaking ICT Forum which will serve as the venue to facilitate discussions between our local government officials and technology firms, ushering in the digitization of our LGUs. We believe that this will signal the start of the ‘digital era’ in the grassroots level.”
Various government luminaries led by Dept. of Trade and Industry USec Nora Terrado opened the series of talks, focusing on heightening the country’s overall competitiveness of the country’s LGUs by way of ICT, its role in efficient LGU operations, innovation for public service delivery, and the government-wide Medium-Term Information and Communication Technology Harmonization Initiative or MITHI. Concise, “lightning” sessions featured city leaders such as Mayors Rex Gatchalian of Valenzuela and Oscar Moreno of Cagayan de Oro, both sharing how their LGUs benefitted from incorporating ICT in their local operations.
Meanwhile, Development Bank of the Philippines’ Nilo Cruz, Bohol’s Romulo Tagaan and Project Noah’s Prof. Mahar Lagmay touched on the benefits of digital and electronic initiatives on payment, registry and disaster prevention, respectively. Local, regional and multinational technology companies also made their presence felt by disclosing their capabilities to help Philippine LGUs advance their use of ICT, such as the Telecom Asia Awards nominee for best cloud service PayrollCloud, Globe Charge and Google Apps for Business from Globe, as well as TV white space, disaster preparedness, response and recovery using the cloud, among many others.
For its part, Globe also showcased its innovative GCash PowerPay electronic money service to LGU members in attendance from across the country, which was affirmed by a separate talk by officials from Batangas City and Valenzuela City. Other pocket sessions discussed the potential of incorporating ICT systems for online business registration and licensing, revenue collection, healthcare access, digital citizen registry, tourism and taxation.
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