IT governance in govt offices: Reality or not?

Up to now, we are resolving barangay cases. So

In my separate interview with the Law Department head in 2012, she commented on the Comelec’s compliance with the e-Commerce Act, saying, “I don’t think we have already started during the time of enactment of [the] e-Commerce Act. Although as an agency of the government, we have been trying to comply. But you see, we have several complaints like not only budgetary but of course, the competence of our people in the commission.”

The Planning Department head then told me: “I do not know that there was such compliance. If there is compliance, I should know because this is a law, and it has been since 2000. I did not hear of that in Comelec or from anyone here. I heard about it on my own because of our continuing legal education.”

Interestingly, the appointment of former commissioner Augusto “Gus” Lagman in 2011 made a lot of changes in managing the systems and processes of Comelec as he was also acting then as the CIO of Comelec. In my interview in 2012 with Lagman, he said that Comelec was like a virgin forest with so many things to do and improve. He also said the last CIO of Comelec known to the public served from the time of the preparation of the 2004 automated national and local elections until he retired in 2009. Nobody has replaced him. According to Lagman, accounting and other common of

“Automating the elections is not the only application that you can automate in Comelec. One of the recommendations I made was to automate the monitoring of election cases. Side by side with the monitoring of cases, let us allow

the reason for that is…when you complete all the documents.

You have to submit something like 11 copies. Suppose case is a barangay election case, and say that you are in Mindanao, you have to send 11 copies to Intramuros. So,

we should allow electronic

can just email it to us”

On another note regarding finance, Lagman said, “‘ automated Excel-excel

Others, HR! applications. It’s not only the automation of elections.” In 2017, the Commission on Audit said they had already trained Comelec on how to use the electronic government accounting system (e-NGAS) in 2016. Perhaps today, Comelec may share their experiences on how they have gone through the e-NGAS implementation.

Lastly, the employees’ labor union also relayed in 2012 that their group was committed to automating the business processes of