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Despite
Everything, Government e-Services Progress
By Michael Alan Hamlin
September 19, 2003
The e-Commerce Act, signed into law with great fanfare
in 2000, among other things requires government agencies to provide
services via the Internet. That's a challenge for at least two reasons.
First, government doesn't have the funds to invest in e-services
development. Second, the technical expertise required to develop
these Internet sites goes for a premium government salary scales
can't match.
Despite these obstacles, progress is being made. AyalaPort
(Full Disclosure: AyalaPort is a client of my firm.) celebrated
its first full year of operations last Friday, and in a media briefing
provided some insights into why government is actually doing a pretty
good job complying with the dictates of the e-Commerce Act.
AyalaPort was originally conceived as a data center - a place where
companies could outsource the computer hardware and software, basically.
However, in response to fast-evolving business process outsourcing
(BPO) trends globally, the company has refined and expanded its
business model to provide a value-added suite of hosted services
that address the BPO requirements of any organization, from SMEs
to multinationals.
"This signals the data center's latest effort to provide end-to-end
solutions that bundle infrastructure, manpower services, and system
applications," AyalaPort president Mark Javier told me. "Companies
from both public and private sectors have welcomed the idea of outsourcing
as a means to reduce costs and enhance business process efficiency.
In the past, there was a reluctance to outsource mission critical
processes because of data and physical security concerns. Technological
advances and new business realities, however, have changed all that."
Javier explained.
In conjunction with AyalaPort's anniversary celebration, The Bureau
of Internal Revenue (BIR) announced that it has completed implementation
of a new electronic filing and payment system (eFPS) with the assistance
of AyalaPort. Outsourcing the system to AyalaPort enabled the BIR
to provide faster, more efficient services to the country's taxpayers,
according to BIR Deputy Commissioner for Information Systems Lilia
Guillermo.
The eFPS provides taxpayers the means to file and pay taxes online
24 hours a day, seven days a week. It also aids BIR in collecting,
storing and retrieving tax information. Already, over 1,300 corporate
taxpayers from different industry sectors are subscribed to the
service, and BIR expects to migrate the top 1,000 corporate taxpayers
from 40 computerized regional district offices (RDOs) next year,
increasing its eFPS corporate subscription base to over 41,000 taxpayers
in the process. By year-end 2005, all taxpayers from these 40 RDOs
- amounting to over one million individual taxpayers - are expected
to go online.
This is first time BIR has outsourced management of its tax payment
system to a third party service provider, according to Guillermo.
"We cannot run the eFPS on our own because of three principal
reasons. First, we lack the facility to efficiently run the very
substantial volume of transactions passing through and stored in
our system. Second, we have scarce IT human resources due to low
salary compensation. Public agencies are tied to a government compensation
scheme that is significantly lower compared to the public sector.
Thus, we lose our best people and are often unable to attract or
retain skilled IT professionals. And finally, we do not have a back-up
system that can secure and protect mission critical data and assure
continued operations in the event of a disaster."
For these reasons BIR invited four data centers to bid for the eFPS
project last June. Guillermo said that after evaluating the bidders,
the agency selected AyalaPort to build and operate the system.
AyalaPort did that in partnership with Soluziona Philippines - a
leading, international applications developer, according to Javier.
The system went live - or became operational - just last month.
It features an interactive Internet portal that automatically calculates
taxpayer remittances, generates electronic receipts and transaction
confirmations that can be received through text or e-mail, provides
user guidelines, and creates online copies of income tax returns.
"And since eFPS can be accessed via the Internet anytime, anywhere,
taxpayers save the time and costs of going to BIR offices. This
is the most convenient, no-cost, quick, and secure means of filing
and paying taxes," Javier said.
For BIR, the system dramatically reduces manual data re-entry, information
error, paperwork, and improves data reliability. "This enhances
the internal operations of BIR, allowing us to collect information
and file it in a very systematic and orderly manner," according
to Guillermo.
Javier believes this BIR experience demonstrates very clearly how
outsourcing makes sense for organizations that want to enhance operations
and save on costs, and especially government. "By hiring us,
a third party, to manage its technology, BIR is leveraging AyalaPort's
industry expertise and data center infrastructure without incurring
significant upfront expenses. This helps them focus on their core
processes as well as improve delivery of public services."
From September to December this year AyalaPort and BIR will jointly
undertake a communication campaign to educate corporate and individual
taxpayers on the eFPS. That's great, I think. We need all the good
news we can get, as well as the easier, truly transparent, and shake-down
immune electronic means of doing our business with the BIR. It's
also good news that AyalaPort is also working with other agencies
such as the SSS, Board of Investment, and the Department of Trade
& Industry.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is
currently at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing
of Asian Professionals into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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