 |
| The League of Municipalities of the Philippines Executive Director and Councilor Albert Emmanuel Permalino present a plaque to Jong-Moo Choi, Head of United Nations Project Office on Governance during the e-Cities Network Workshop in Seoul. |
E-Governance is one of CESO’s many exciting initiatives. In 2007, CESO began its work in this sector in the Philippines. Within this field, technology is introduced to enhance the accessibility of government services to its citizens.
CESO partnered with the League of Municipalities of the Philippines, which represented over 45 regions at the time, and provided technical assistance as part of the new E-Governance for Municipal Development program. Now the affected governments have greater transparency and accountability, employ staff capable in IT project management and are able to quickly serve their citizens. The ability to generate revenue has also improved.
Quicker service directly affects those who want to start their own businesses, too. Wait times for processing business license requests have dramatically decreased with the new automated process—in one municipality wait time went from one hour to four to six minutes—attracting more businesses to the regions.
To ensure the sustainability of this project CESO helped to create eGov4MD, Inc., an association that supports the municipalities utilizing this new technology. CESO and its partners are now planning to expand the program to automate property tax collection and other functions, possibly including financial management and healthcare services.
Two municipalities that collaborated with CESO on a long-term program to improve hardware and software systems (an e-governance initiative) won presidential awards for best practice in business-permit processing.
It is expected that over 70 municipalities will have automated services by early 2011, with the number of municipalities taking part steadily increasing. CESO remains committed to ensuring that the eGov4MD project’s successes are crystallized and that the remaining challenges are addressed ahead of the project’s completion in 2014.