Municipal employees create IT group to help other LGUs

Municipal employees and officers from several provinces in Luzon have set up a new organization that hopes to provide technical support to other local government units in the future, a co-founder of the group told INQUIRER.net.

The new group is an offshoot of the "E-governance for Municipal Development" project of the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO), according to Ricardo Bobis, president of the eGov4MD, in an interview. Bobis is also the municipal treasurer of San Antonio, Zambales.

Bobis was part of a training program conducted by CESO in cooperation with several government agencies, which involved Canadian volunteers sent to help local government units implement open source-based systems. The project covered regions I, III and IV.

Bobis said the new group was originally an online technical support group for the project participants. It eventually evolved into a full-blown organization that aims to advocate e-governance in local government units, he said.

So far, the group has attracted more than 60 members from 33 municipalities in Luzon.

Members are mainly coming from the municipal treasury offices and the technical and information technology departments, he added.

"Our vision is to implement e-governance in all municipalities in the country," he said.

The group was created in August 2007, but was only recently registered with the Securities Exchange Commission as a legal entity, he said.

The group intends to become the "technical support" group for the CESO project, which has implemented three open source-based systems developed by the National Computer Center. These systems include the Real Property Tax System, Business Permit and License System and the Treasury Operations Management System.

EGov4MD recently proposed an eBay-like service, dubbed eDispose, designed to auction disposable LGU assets during a technology boot camp hosted by Morph Labs. By Erwin Oliva - INQUIRER.net