Digital archive for Barili Council

CEBU, Philippines - Thousands of resolutions and ordinances passed over the decades are now electronically preserved in one DVD as the second class southern Cebu town of Barili goes digital.

Aside from being now a portable archive with easy access to legislators and the public, the pieces of legislation are now coded or categorized for easy reference.

A project of Vice Mayor Marlon Garcia and the Municipal Council, the ordinances are grouped into the following: budget, peace and order, health, environment, waterworks, sisterhood agreements, municipal lots, infrastructure, taxes/fees/charges, penal and criminal, regulatory and administrative matters.

The most interesting aspect of the modernization of Barili’s archives is the one-click search engine which is what the Google search engine does.

A legislator, a researcher or the municipal secretary will only have to enter keywords and all pages containing the searched keyword will appear in seconds.

“A modern legislative building and now an electronic, digital archive, I feel very proud of having achieved these significant milestones for Barili,” said Garcia.

“These are the legacies of this present council for this and the next generations. These are proof that we can deliver. And more have yet to come,” added Garcia who is running for mayor in next year’s elections.

Information Technology specialist David T. Ramos presented the completed digital archive to the Municipal Council and the Municipal Secretary during their regular session last Wednesday, November 7.

“This system is compatible with web browsing in case they decide to put up their own website,” says Ramos, a computer programmer.

The Council also reconstructed the data lost to the fire that gutted the Barili Municipal Hall in 1992.

Since the town secretary only had resolutions and ordinances from 1993 to 2012, a researcher was tasked to gather from the Provincial Secretary’s Office and other offices the data that the town lost to the blaze.

As a result of the project, the town now was able to retrieve and now has copies of the resolutions and ordinances from 1992 to as far back as 1955. These were also included in the modern archive.

The modernization of Barili’s records complemented the building of the new Barili Legislative Building, which was completed and inaugurated last August and now houses the offices of the  vice mayor and the councilors as well as the session hall.

The Legislative Building is the first since Barili came into being and the first time the councilors have offices of their own under Garcia’s leadership. — (FREEMAN)