THE dream of digital governance for the city is slowly becoming a reality.
On Monday, November 9, the launch of Baguio City in My Pocket (BIMP) and Transport Pre-Alert and Support System (T-Pass) programs were held at City Hall in simple rites with officials and leading technology partners.
Mayor Benjamin Magalong said despite setbacks brought by the health pandemic, the city is inching closer to its digital goals with the launch of the programs aimed to create cashless payments and ease business in the city.
The mayor said the BIMP is an ambitious project that will give access to government services, cashless systems and transportation for real time tracking.
Information Technology Business Solutions (ITBS) and OneLGC conducted Pilot testing at barangay Irisan was done for the technology with systems for digital government transactions which will provide quick access to emergency services and designed to aid a contact-tracing tool.
The app is a multi-purpose smart phone application and web portal while OneLGC owner Alberto Lina explained that T-Pass is a digital platform for registering cargo vehicles, including key information on parcels, persons and things.
T-Pass also enhances Covid-19 containment measures by enhancing current surveillance of entrants.
John Paul Miranda, ITBS chief executive officer, said the city is in the forefront of digital governance to address the challenges of modernization for a barangay data base to address disaster preparedness.
Miranda added the technology is set to address current and future challenges the city is facing and a step in modernization of barangay data base.
Data gathered by the ITBS system and citizen registration management system (CRMS) according to Miranday will help the local government unit serve its community in disaster preparedness, social services, business distribution, contact tracing and ease of doing business along with the registration digital id cards and e-wallets and QR codes will be distributed at no cost to registrants, system is open to all digital payment providers.
The system aims to limiting person to person contact while eliminating fraud, on line payments, revolutionize government services, educational content delivery.
Both applications were offered free to the city in its efforts towards digitization of its governance and achieve Smart City status where technology is used to solve city problems and provide more effective service.