The Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) and Microsoft Philippines, together with its partners Highly Succeed and Blackbox, are currently in partnership with the City Government of Iloilo City headed by Mayor Jed Patrick E. Mabilog, the Information Technology Services Division headed by Mr. Francis Cruz, and the City Assessors Office headed by Engr. Nelson E. Parreño. This initiative is under the project Developing Proofs Of Concept: ICTs in Local Governance which runs from June 2016 to March 2017 with the following components – (1) Technology, which includes the deployment and integration of an application in the local government unit’s service-delivery, (2) Evidence Generation, which includes needs and impact assessment and video documentation, and (3) Policy Advocacy, which includes the creation of roadmap for an ICT-Enabled LGU, site cases, and policy papers.
The technology, developed together by the aforementioned stakeholders, utilizes a mechanism that has been vastly used by people for pretty much everything in their daily lives—an application. Applications have been widely used not only for social networking, but also in business, health, and even in the religious facets of people’s lives. This application will allow the netizens of Iloilo City to transact with their local government unit, specifically the City Assessor’s Office and will ultimately improve the overall service delivery of CAO.
As of January 2017, ULAP has already consulted with Mayor Jed Mabilog and Mr. Francis Cruz on August 03, 2016 and they have given their commitment and support for the project, identifying the CAO as focal agency for the technology. The team followed through with a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with the employees of the City Assessor’s Office together with some of the members of Information Technology Services Division. This was followed through by the technology development team and eventually came up with the application, CityServ, with the following features:
- E-queuing
- Tracking
- Events and News
- Calendar and Weather
This technology offers the citizens of IloIlo the comfort and efficiency of getting information, filling up forms, getting a number for queuing and tracking of progress on document processing with the IloIlo City Assessors Office.
Currently, the project team, City Government of Iloilo and the CAO are preparing for the official launch of the technology. This will be followed by a post-implementation evaluation, assessment and FGD on the project as a whole, tentatively scheduled on March 2017.
