NSO clarifies 'inefficient' tag

The National Statistics Office has denied the claim of a Talisay City official that the agency has been inefficient in releasing documents.

A statement from the NSO signed by its regional director Lilia Tandoc said that the agency has been experiencing technical problems especially in their NSO-Serbilis Center Outlet which is interconnected with the Central Facility Database in Manila.

The statement said the procedure in getting NSO Civil Registry documents undergoes electronic processes and therefore relies on the condition of the computer main server, the host and remote-requesting computer and the telecommunication lines.

For the month of June, the statement said, the NSO experienced enormous volume of requests, electronic and technical problems as well as failed telecommunication lines that hampered the operation of the agency's Serbilis outlet.

Also last June 1, an offline status occurred for some hours while on June 7 and 8, communication was cut off due to system failure at the NSO Central facility in Manila.

In the 3rd week of June, the telecommunication lines failed because the cable lines connected to the outlet's main server were disconnected by thieves.

For this month, an offline in July 3 was experienced due to another electronic failure experienced in NSO Central facility but was fixed later in the day.

In July 11, the system failed and a replacement was immediately sent from NSO Central Office and was received by the outlet at 2:00 pm the following day for installation. While the replacement unit initializes and refreshes its system, a problem occurred that still cannot be fully fixed up to July 13 which is why no documents were processed and released both to the in-house requesters and to the requesters from the LGUs through the Batch Request Query System (BREQS).

BREQS is a system provided by the National Statistics Office to the Local Government Units under a memorandum of agreement authorizing the LGUs to receive applications or requests for Civil Registry Documents are coursed through the Local Civil Registrars Office. Application forms are stored in a diskette that will be submitted to the NSO Serbilis Center for indexing, verification, downloading, printing, sorting, and releasing of the requested document.

Tandoc said she had a meeting with all the BREQS users in Argao, Bogo, Carcar, and Talisay and informed them that they have been experiencing technical problems by the NSO-Serbilis Outlet more particularly on the offline status.

"The NSO processes an average of 950 to 1,000 documents per day. Hence a day of offline means a thousand backlog which affects the transaction for the succeeding days," Tandoc said. -Jasmin R. Uy