Purchase of laptops for gov’t workers deferred

MANILA, Philippines - The purchase of laptop computers for government workers has been deferred to 2016 to make way for a nationwide rollout of an information and communications technology (ICT) flagship project next year to establish free Wifi hotspots in over 50,872 sites.

The Department of Science and Technology’s Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) yesterday said the Senate realigned the budget allocated for the bulk purchase of laptop computers.

DOST Undersecretary and ICTO executive director Louis Casambre said the budget allocation for the free Wifi project increased from an initial P338 million for 600 communities to a whopping P3 billion for 50,872 sites.

Casambre stressed that the decision was made on the recommendation of Sen. Ralph Recto after the DOST budget came up for deliberation.

“Sen. Recto proposed to realign the budget for laptop purchase to the Free Wifi project instead so it would not only be for the Class 4, 5 and 6 municipalities but for schools, universities, libraries and rural health units across the country,” he said.

“The Senate agreed with him so that’s what they proposed – that buying the laptops be deferred to 2016,” he added.

“The WiFi access would have a direct impact on the people,” Casambre said.

From the 50,872 WiFi hotspots to be set up by the DOST-ICTO under the P3-billion project, it will include 7,917 public high schools, 38,694 public elementary schools, 113 state colleges and 1,118 public libraries and public spaces in 1,490 municipalities.

The ICTO and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) are finishing the terms of reference for the public bidding that the two departments will jointly conduct to procure about 250,000 laptops for government employees.

Casambre said the specifications for the laptop purchase were for a “modern” laptop with a 15-inch screen, i5 performance and also security features TPM, encrypted SSD and Windows 8.1 PRO.

The laptop procurement is being pursued by the DOST ICTO and DBM under their joint Medium-Term Information and Communications Technology Harmonization Initiative (MITHI) project.

MITHI is a government effort to streamline all ICT procurement and development projects of all national government agencies to ensure uniform and harmonized computers and ICT equipment used by all government employees.

Under MITHI, the DOST and the DBM will buy over 250,000 laptop computers over three years in a move to give all government employees laptop computers and turn them into “e-civil servants.”

Under the program, DBM will procure 95,000 laptops in 2014 and 80,000 in 2015 and 2016 until all national government employees from Salary Grade 4 and above will each have a laptop computer.

The laptops, it was learned, will be replaceable every three years. A civil servant, at the end of the three years, will also be given an option to buy the laptop computer for 10 percent of the government’s cost of buying the laptop.

The laptop procurement will also address the personal computer (PC) gap in government, where civil servants either do not have a PC, or use old computer equipment that has an adverse effect on their productivity and the speed of delivery of services to the public.

The provision of laptop computers for government employees is a major complementary project to the DOST’s Integrated Governance Philippines (iGovPhil) program that seeks to lay out an efficient electronic or e-government infrastructure and systems in the Philippines.