DBM releases P878.5 M for gov’t IT infra

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Budget and Management said yesterday it has released P878.5 million for the development of government’s information and communications technology infrastructure.

In a statement, the agency said the funds were released to the Department of Science and Technology-Information and Communications Technology Office (DOST-ICTO) for the second phase of the Integrated Government Philippines (iGovPhil) project.

“Our continued investments in high-impact ICT programs are central to the Aquino administration’s good governance agenda. We remain committed to harnessing technology and developing relevant mechanisms to improve the way government agencies work with each other,” Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad said.

“Data security won’t be an issue, since we’ll be using common application systems across the bureaucracy,” he continued.

iGovPhil is a part of the e-Government Master Plan of 2013-2016 that aims to make the best use of ICT resources through shared infrastructure, services, and applications for national government agencies.

“Aside from the savings that we will generate from paperless transactions, we will also save time by linking various government agencies through the shared ICT infrastructure,” Abad said.

“Ultimately, these are efforts to improve the speed and efficiency by which we deliver public services,” he added.

The bulk of the funds released or P427.8 million will be used for the establishment and operation of data centers, while another P310.8 million will be finance the deployment of finer optic cable.

The Budget department also said P64.8 million will be used for the project implementation itself, while P36.9 million will fund the social mobilisation and industrial cooperation component of the project.

Another P37.3 million will be used for systems development or the enhancement of applications, while some P1 million will be used for the transition from execution to operations phase.