BIR asks DICT to fix hardware meltdown quickly

MANILA -- Internal Revenue Commissioner Ceasar Dulay said government IT-experts have been slow in resolving the bureau’s technological issues following a glitch that affected websites of several state agencies on July 3, 2018.

In a report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, Dulay said the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) Information Systems Group (ISG) is still following-up on their request to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to address the problem that affected BIR’s electronic Tax Information System (eTIS).

“No formal reply yet from DICT, but we are in contact with them every day,” he said.

In a letter to DICT Acting Secretary Eliseo M. Rio Jr. dated July 18, 2018, Dulay said the DICT Data Center “houses and hosts the BIR core systems and certain eServices.”

He said the “major hardware meltdown” prevented the BIR to access its eTIS “and is now causing an enormous disruption of eTIS operations, affecting taxpayers of Large Taxpayer Service (LTS) and Revenue Region 8 Makati.”

This problem, he said, “will ultimately have dire consequences” on collections of RR8-Makati, thus, he is asking for the resolution of the problem as soon as possible.

“We need the DICT Data Center Support Team to move more expediently, with urgency and to provide a timeline of activities on hardware restoration,” he added. (PNA)