Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) commissioner Tim Diaz de Rivera said that Congress has agreed to allocate about 10 percent of the 2008 e-government budget of P1 billion for these ICT feasibility studies.
Diaz de Rivera said that the CICT pushed this specific guideline in the 2008 budget to also help government upgrade its capability to conduct feasibility studies and hire independent consultants to help them develop better terms of references for ICT projects.
CICT is also already planning to use the budget to upgrade the country’s Government Information System Plan, a government roadmap for ICT related projects written in 1999.
Diaz de Rivera said the budget is available to all government agencies, but subject to the review of a technical working group composed of different government agencies, including the CICT.
The e-Government Fund, which was sourced from government savings, was intended to finance government information and communications technology projects that aim to improve the delivery of government services to the people.
During a workshop conducted to validate initial findings of the E3 (E-governance for Effectiveness Efficiency) project on Public Private Partnership, government representatives admitted that there are inadequate terms of reference in ICT-related projects because of the lack of financial resources to create one. In most instances, the TOR is dictated by suppliers, thus projects becoming “supplier driven.”
The E3 is a project under management and technology consulting firm BearingPoint. Bearing Point has won the bid to implement the E3 project under a grant from the Canadian International Development Agency.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Erwin Oliva
Quelle/Source: Inquirer, 07.03.2008
