QUEZON CITY, Aug. 16 (PIA)--Quezon City government recently hosted officials from Palawan and Tagbilaran City who are on study tour.
Accompanied by USAID Strengthening Urban Resilience for Growth with Equity (SURGE) officers, Puerto Princesa Mayor Lucilo Bayron and Vice Mayor Luis Marcaida III, and Tagbilaran City Mayor John Geesnell Yap II led their respective city officials in a study tour of Quezon City last August 9, 2016. Mayor Herbert Bautista advised the officials not to be afraid to take risks when instituting reforms, but also to be sure to have legal basis for their actions, be it a national law or a local ordinance.
He encouraged exchange of learnings among LGUs, a practice he promoted when he was president of the League of Cities of the Philippines, because no single LGU has a monopoly of successful programs. The visiting local government officials said they wanted to jump-start their learning and implementation of governance innovations by studying strategies in Quezon City that have been proven to be effective. Subject of the two cities’ study has been the following: Development of Quezon City’s information technology backbone for revenue generation and business registration.
The technology infrastructure also connects the city’s health services under the Community Health Information Tracking System (CHITS), the LGU’s inter-department GIS systems, the efinancial systems, as well as the internal communication system within the LGU. The process for registering businesses in Quezon City, which also involves the link and co-location of zoning and the Bureau of Fire representative in the Business One Stop Shop.
The electronic payment systems for business and real property taxes, which is backed by ordinances and Commission on Audit circulars to assure it as an acceptable system for local governments.
The processing of building permits in Quezon City, which has been cited by a World Bank study has having instituted the most significant reforms among the 10 indicators of doing business; The city’s real property tax mapping system, which required the installation of Php 18 million in geographic information system software and technologies to resolve discrepancies and discover unrecorded property data, which eventually resulted in an increased real property tax take for the QC-LGU of Php 700 million.
The officials rounded up their learning through a view of the actual operations of the Business One Stop Shop, the Building Department’s processing and evaluation systems and the QC-LGU’s new command center. (QC PAISO/RJB/SDL/PIA-NCR) -
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