What so important about it? Well everything... We're one of the very few Local Government Units (LGU) who have a permanent department for IT with permanent plantillas. Meaning we get to keep our position even when a new set of government official takes there place in our city.
Sustainability is challenging enough at the National Government level and more challening on a local government unit. You see, most of the people working for the LGU have some ties with who sitting on the city council, mayor or vice mayor.
When I started working for Government 5 years ago, the first thing I did was to map out peoples relation to certain people and I had the shock of my life. I have brothers, sisters, husband and wives, cousins, sons and daugthers and worst of all people who had relations with certain officials (you know what I mean). :-)
So how did I do it? Slowly I mapped out a road map on how to deal with these people relationships and be able to pierce through them. Last month, I got the chance to let go five of them. In total as of today, I have gotten rid of 15 or more people already and I not afraid to let go of more for the sake of a flatter and leaner organization. Life is tough when you are working in an environment like this indeed... :-)
Aside from this internal force, you have to keep watch of external forces. Other department heads who manipulate and deceive officials on getting into projects that are ICT related but was never channeled or coordinated with the department. Well guess what, I slap the other department with a copy of the department's mandate and with that, we were able to tame them. I'm expecting more of this exercise but all I can do to protect the interest of the people is this piece of paper in my hands, the department's ordinance. That should be enough to remind them also that the citizen of Cebu City will be up in their armpits when they violate this...:-)
Showing posts with label MICS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MICS. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
On ICT Initiatives on Government
They say "You can bring the horse to the water but you can never force it to drink". I say,"Bring the horse to the water anyway. Sooner or later it will get thirsty and it will drink"... ;-) If they don't like your initiatives, just take the lead and make it really good. Sooner or later they will see your effort and see it is good and then eventually will join the ban... ;-)
The Cebu City GIS Experience
I consider sharing experiences as a way of telling people that they are not alone or they are lucky that they don't have to go through painful mistakes on project implementation and that they can avoid those mistakes and do it right.
Had to wake up early in the morning to travel more than 50Km from Davao City to a fellow LGU called Digos City who has just started their GIS initiatives. For me it was an opportunity to help initiatives like this. And today's meeting I consider it fruitful.
They were at the verge of drastically cutting budgets simple because they had been misinformed about what this thing call GIS is all about.
By the way, for the information of my readers here (if there are any ;-)), GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems. It's about putting spatial information on maps. To make is even simpler, you have map (in digital format of course), your data or information, you have a location and then you tie them together so that you can analyzed it. Since we are already ahead on this with regards to project implementation, I have a lot to share to them.
One simple GIS project I presented to them was Dengue Cases. We plotted incidences of Dengue in a community on a map and then let the computer process the information and come out with result on which areas had the most number of cases. Knowing who has the highest incidence would greatly help us target that specific area for operations and eliminate the guessing game and rationalize service delivery.
As expected, some were happy and some were emotional. In the end, at least I was able to present something decent and very layman for them to evaluate further and reconsider. That was enough to make me happy. In the end, I was able to say my piece.
I was presenting together with Davao City people who also has a long experience in GIS projects. Some project where similar, others unique. Bottom line was, that GIS as explained was a computerized system which serves as a tool to eliminate the guessing game and promote further transparency in governance and improve efficiency in delivery of services.
Had to wake up early in the morning to travel more than 50Km from Davao City to a fellow LGU called Digos City who has just started their GIS initiatives. For me it was an opportunity to help initiatives like this. And today's meeting I consider it fruitful.
They were at the verge of drastically cutting budgets simple because they had been misinformed about what this thing call GIS is all about.
By the way, for the information of my readers here (if there are any ;-)), GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems. It's about putting spatial information on maps. To make is even simpler, you have map (in digital format of course), your data or information, you have a location and then you tie them together so that you can analyzed it. Since we are already ahead on this with regards to project implementation, I have a lot to share to them.
One simple GIS project I presented to them was Dengue Cases. We plotted incidences of Dengue in a community on a map and then let the computer process the information and come out with result on which areas had the most number of cases. Knowing who has the highest incidence would greatly help us target that specific area for operations and eliminate the guessing game and rationalize service delivery.
As expected, some were happy and some were emotional. In the end, at least I was able to present something decent and very layman for them to evaluate further and reconsider. That was enough to make me happy. In the end, I was able to say my piece.
I was presenting together with Davao City people who also has a long experience in GIS projects. Some project where similar, others unique. Bottom line was, that GIS as explained was a computerized system which serves as a tool to eliminate the guessing game and promote further transparency in governance and improve efficiency in delivery of services.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Excited!
I have two important places and events to go to this week and next week. Will be in Davao to present about our experiences on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Projects and then off to Manila for Futuregov.
It's going to be a busy day for me today. ;-)
It's going to be a busy day for me today. ;-)
Saturday, March 1, 2008
IT in Governance
It's a lazy Saturday and I just woke up with a massive migraine this morning and yeah that really started the day wrong. I went on with my daily routine and then drove back home and slept the entire morning.
Got up around a little past 1pm and still my head is spinning. Drank two tabs of Tylenol and then played my online game (Ogame). Yeah, thanks to Tylenol I feel better. :-)
Anyway, in my previous post, I mentioned about what my occupation is and what this blog is supposed to be about. Yes, I.T. and yes anything that has computers on it is under my job description. (As what most of the department head in the organization would think).
I've been very busy lately and there are currently over 20 major project being worked out by the department. Here is a short list of major projects being undertaken:
1. General Collection System
2. Re-engineering of the existing Business Permit Renewal System
3. Re-engineering of the existing Real Property Tax System
4. Electronic New Government Accounting System
5. Online Taxpayers Portal
6. Online Payment System
7. Human Resources Information System
8. Network Upgrade and Redundancy
9. Orthophoto
10. Treasury Operations Management System
The challenges faced in the implementation of new systems or improvement of existing systems could vary from simple changes in the political climate, budgetary constraints or end-user indifference. I'll discuss some of these projects in details next time.
That's IT for me for now.
Got up around a little past 1pm and still my head is spinning. Drank two tabs of Tylenol and then played my online game (Ogame). Yeah, thanks to Tylenol I feel better. :-)
Anyway, in my previous post, I mentioned about what my occupation is and what this blog is supposed to be about. Yes, I.T. and yes anything that has computers on it is under my job description. (As what most of the department head in the organization would think).
I've been very busy lately and there are currently over 20 major project being worked out by the department. Here is a short list of major projects being undertaken:
1. General Collection System
2. Re-engineering of the existing Business Permit Renewal System
3. Re-engineering of the existing Real Property Tax System
4. Electronic New Government Accounting System
5. Online Taxpayers Portal
6. Online Payment System
7. Human Resources Information System
8. Network Upgrade and Redundancy
9. Orthophoto
10. Treasury Operations Management System
The challenges faced in the implementation of new systems or improvement of existing systems could vary from simple changes in the political climate, budgetary constraints or end-user indifference. I'll discuss some of these projects in details next time.
That's IT for me for now.
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