CICT chairman Ramon Sales told reporters in an interview Thursday that he has directed the group of Commissioner Emmanuel Lallana to organize a team of consultants that will serve all 370 national government agencies or NGAs.
Lallana heads the Human Capital Development group in CICT.
Most NGAs already have their own respective ICT initiatives and the CICT is looking to take this a step further through integration. For those yet to implement such projects, the commission wants to assist these agencies in crafting ICT plans by providing technical expertise.
Outside of its available resources, CICT is expected to tap consultants from the private sector.
'There is a need to translate these strategic plans into business capabilities,' Sales said, noting that if an agency does not have a specific road map, the 'loudest' proposal within that agency tends to get the most leverage and, thus, implemented.
During the interview, Sales, who has previous experience as chief information officer and technical consultant to local and multinational companies including Citibank and Bank of the Philippines (BPI), talked about concepts such as 'enterprise architecture' and 'portfolio management" that he said can also be applied to IT in government.
'We need to define the hardware requirements (of agencies) and next bring the applications that would run on top it,' he added. He also talked about creating 'service centers' that will serve back-up and disaster recovery requirements in government.
Following a mandate by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself, Sales previously announced plans to implement IP telephony and convert the entire government telephony system in order to cut down telecommunication costs by half.
According to his estimate, the government spends about P4 billion (US$37 billion) in telecommunication expenses annually. Through VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), he said this could cut down the number of telephone lines used in government.
Moreover, Sales, appointed as CICT chair barely a month ago, said all nine major telecommunications service providers have been informed that bidding for VOIP will be done on a per agency basis, starting with the Office of the President.
In its Web site, the CICT has already issued a call for VOIP product presentations.