Bulacan leads winners in e-LGU website contest

By Alexander Villafania, INQ7.net

The province of Bulacan led the group of local government units awarded at the recent 2005 LGU Website contest organized by the National Computer Center (NCC).

Bulacan’s website (www.bulacan.gov.ph) won in the independent category for the provincial level, besting the other finalists Bataan, Benguet, Bohol, and Zamboanga del Sur.

The website of Naga City (www.naga.gov.ph) bagged the city level award in the independent category. The other finalists were Escalante City in Negros Occidental, Bayawan in Negros Oriental, Mandaue in Cebu, and San Carlos in Negros Occidental.

The municipality of Trinidad, Bohol won in the independent category on the municipal level.

The independent category refers to LGUs that developed their own websites while the content management system (CMS) category refers to LGUs that use the website template created by the NCC.

In the CMS category, the municipal level winner was Pateros, Metro Manila, beating the municipalities of Kalibo, Aklan and Tandag, Surigao Del Sur.

Entries to the contest were judged based on their websites’ functionality, content, presentation, originality, and responsiveness to e-governance.

The contest is part of the NCC’s “Jumpstarting Electronic Governance in Local Government Units” (eLGU) Project, which aims to created and expand the online presence of the country’s LGUs for future inclusion of e-commerce and e-governance services.