Dads create Management and Innovation Dept

THE 19th City Council during its regular session yesterday presided over by Vice Mayor Raineir Joaquin V. Uy enacted an ordinance creating the City Management Information Systems and Innovation Department (CMISID) providing for its functions and organizational structure and for other purposes.

This is pursuant to RA10844 or the Department of Information and Communications Technology Act of 2015, recognizing the vital role of information and communications technology particularly to the enhancement of the local government’s key public service such as education, public health and safety, revenue generation, and socio-civic purposes closer to public benefit through online applications, digitized transactions, among others, for an efficient, responsive, ethical, accountable and transparent government service.

The said law likewise recognizes the need to promote and assist the development of local ICT content, applications and services which may include support for ICT-based start-up enterprises through strategic partnerships; to promote digital literacy, ICT expertise and knowledge-building among citizens to enable them to participate and compete in an evolving ICT age; to empower, through the use of ICT the disadvantaged segments of the population, including the elderly, persons with disabilities and indigenous and minority groups.

With the creation of the CMISID as a separate and distinct department of the City Government, the City Management Information System Office under the Office of the Chief Executive shall be abolished with all its resources to be turned over and all its powers and functions to be absorbed by the CMISID.

Among the CMISID’s mandate is to formulate, recommend and implement policies, plans, programs, initiatives, and guidelines that will promote the development and use of ICT and GIS in the effective and efficient delivery of public service.

It shall likewise prescribe rules and regulations for the establishment, operation and maintenance of ICT infrastructures in the city government and its unserved and underserved areas, harmonize and coordinate all ICT plans and initiatives to ensure knowledge, information and resource-sharing, database-building and networking linkages among various departments and offices.

Moreover, it shall also ensure and protect the rights and welfare of stakeholders and users to privacy, security and confidentiality in matters relating to ICT, lead the city government’s drive to promote research and innovation by encouraging new initiatives in knowledge creation in science and technology and to catalyze new areas of long-term economic growth and advantage, among others.

The legislation was reviewed and endorsed by the committees on planning, research and innovation and on laws and rules both chaired by Councilor Ian Mark Q. Nacaya.