BAGUIO CITY – The City Council will be starting the implementation of paperless transactions in their regular sessions by next year after the City Budget Office provided the initial funding for the first phase of the computerization project.
Under the P1.76 billion proposed budget of the City Government next year, more than P2 million was allocated for the implementation of paperless transactions during the regular sessions of the local legislative body to save on the huge expenditures for paper and ink for the printing of the agenda, committee reports, and attached comments.
Once the paperless transaction will be implemented, the secretariat will no longer be requesting for at least 18 copies of all documents being submitted to the local legislative body for the pertinent actions of the members of the collegial body, resulting in savings of time, effort, and resources among those involved in the transactions.
It was learned the City Council requested for a total of over P5 million to be included in next year’s budget to fund its overall paperless transactions covering all transactions in the local legislative body but only P2 million was included in the budget which will be good for the hardware of the said system to cover the paperless transactions during the regular session of the council.
The council will try to emulate the paperless transactions in other highly urbanized cities and first-class municipalities that already started implementing the paperless transactions in the operations of their respective local governments.
Local officials claim the implementation of paperless transactions in the local legislative body is part of the efforts of the city to provide quality and timely delivery of services to those transacting business with the different offices of the city.
The initial phase of the paperless transactions in the local legislative body will pave the way for the implementation of its second phase upon the availability of funds to support the enactment of a supplemental budget, otherwise, the funding support for its completion will be included in the budget for 2018.
At present, the council still relies on the submission of voluminous documents from those transacting business with the different offices which translates to the use of much time, effort and resources just to produce 18 copies of the documents being submitted for action by the members of the council.
By Dexter A. See
