Pampanga GIS project aboveboard, says systems provider

The president of Geodata Solutions, a systems provider, emphasized that the Pampanga GIS project was aboveboard, conceived for the benefit of the people of Pampanga and designed to increase real property revenues of the province.

In compliance with the build-transfer-operate (BTO) contract signed on Jan. 23, 2006 between the provincial government of Pampanga and Geodata Solutions, company president Alberto Morales said in a statement e-mailed from Singapore, “We have delivered state-of-the-art hardware, software and GIS application systems and (these were) properly accepted and documented.”

“Trainings and change management activities were (videotaped) and formed part of our project documentation. These are available for anyone to see,” he added.

The project was to computerize the real property system of the province through a unified system with those of the municipalities and link this to the digital parcel map that was created by Geodata. It also involved computerizing the operations at the provincial capitol.

Morales said part of the GIS project with successful implementation are the municipalities of Mabalacat and Mexico, which have been utilizing the real property systems installed by Geodata.

The development of GIS in Mabalacat enabled the creation of digital map data, which linked the real property system with dynamic maps to identify location of parcels, lot owners’ information, delinquent taxpayers, property valuation, payment history and report generation.

“This municipality now enjoys a substantial increase in real property tax collections,” Morales said.

The full implementation of the computerization project, however, was brought to a halt as soon as the new provincial administration took over.

Geodata was unable to continue the project due to a demand letter from Atty. Vivian Dabu, dated Dec. 18, 2007, to turn over all the Geodata-installed systems to the MIS administrator. 

Furthermore, the Geodata team was told to vacate the office assigned to them at the provincial capitol for project implementation.   Morales said Geodata complied with the new administration’s orders, vacated the premises and turned over all documentations and systems to the provincial government.

The Geodata project team was no longer given access to the installed application systems and database, he said. 

According to Morales, Geodata has exhausted all efforts to discuss steps to continue the implementation of the project.  

A formal letter was sent to Dabu dated Nov. 24, 2008, expressing Geodata’s willingness to finish the project’s implementation.

In addition, Geodata representatives sought an audience with the provincial administrator or her representative to iron out any concerns and to continue the operation of Geodata’s developed systems. However, they were ignored, Morales said. 

“Geodata strongly believes that the use of the computerized GIS-based, revenue-generating systems will benefit the entire province of Pampanga in increasing its revenues from real property,” he said.

“Geodata is a professional organization and we are interested only in giving our clients the best in computerized systems. Before we started the project, we even ‘localized’ our project team by recruiting Pampanga IT professionals to form the core of our implementers, so that they will give their best to their home-province. We are still committed to do the same,” he added.