House OKs bill establishing e-government masterplan

The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved on third and final reading the measure seeking to establish an E-Government masterplan allowing the public to access government services through the internet.

Voting 229-0, the chamber approved House Bill 6927 or the proposed "E-Government Act."

The measure primarily aims to create an effective E-Government plan that would translate to more efficient delivery of government services through interoperability and minimize human intervention in government transactions to curtail corruption.

The bill provides for the inclusion of various programs in the E-Government masterplan including the Philippine Government Interoperability Framework that will guide the basic technical and informational interoperability of government ICT systems.

The Archives and Records Management Information System will also be established to efficiently manage government documents and records, including the digitization of paper-based documents and development of systems to manage them.

The measure also creates the Government Online Payment System allowing citizens and businesses to remit payments electronically to government agencies.

Further, the Citizen Frontline Delivery Services will also be established to efficiently facilitate business registration-related transactions by integrating all agencies involved in such purpose, such as the Department of Trade and Industry, Securities and Exchange Commission, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Social Security System, Pag-Ibig, Philippine Health Insurance Corp., among others.

The Secretary of the Department of Information and Communications Technology will be tasked to head the E-Government initiative, assisted by chief information officers assigned and deployed to national and key governmental units.

The measure likewise mandates that each local government unit have an ICT officer to manage and supervise its adoption of the E-Government Plan.

Senator Grace Poe filed a similar measure in the Senate. —LDF, GMA News