Philippines signs 12 year IT for digital services
By Charlene Chin
Aims to slash time for citizens to obtain official documents.
The Philippines signed a 12 year contract to outsource some key government digital services. The was signed by the Philippines Statistics Authority with Unisys to modernise its Civil Registry System. This contract will overhaul all systems related to the registrations of births, deaths and marriages.
“Citizens need quick and easy access to these trusted documents as they are the foundation for many other items such as visas and passports”, said Lisa Grace S. Bersales, National Statistician and Civil Registrar General, Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Unisys will lead a public-private partnership (PPP) to design, implement and maintain the system. No fees will be paid upfront, but Unisys will take a proportion of each fee paid to PSA for this system over the 12 year period.
The project intends to roll out changes in two years, building a new customer service facility and dedicated in-house data centre, centralising its back office infrastructure.
It will also create 40 Civil Registry System offices to double the current number of places citizens can visit to obtain their documents, and set up “self-service kiosks” and “mobile outlets” in remote locations, reaching out to rural residents.
12 years ago, Facebook was just launched, the most popular smartphone was the Motorola Razr flip phone, and iTunes launched in Asia and Europe.
The PPP programme was launched in 2011 by the Aquino administration to speed up infrastructure developments in the country, aimed at fostering collaboration between government and businesses to share related risks and costs.