City officials recently commended Severina B. de Leon, retired Assistant City Budget Officer, for her contributions to the active participation of the local government to the Digital Governance Award that earned a number of awards for the city in various years and categories and other notable works.
In a resolution authored by Councilor Betty Lourdes F. Tabanda, local legislators stated that the city government truly appreciates the exceptional services rendered by Ms. De Leon and that her brilliance, expertise and God-given wisdom embodies the true spirit of public service which is above self and without reservation.
De Leon was the former Assistant City Budget officer who rendered a total of 28 years and 9 months of dedicated and committed service to the city. She is a graduate of Bachelor of Science in Commerce, major in Accountancy, cum laude and an honor graduate with the highest grade of the University of Baguio.
She obtained her Masters degree in Accountancy, magna cum laude, at the St. Louis University.
Ms. De Leon joined the city government on March 7, 1994 under the City Budget Office and stayed with the said office until her retirement in 2022.
In 2018, the council noted that her curiosity about the search was stimulated when she first learned that a local government unit was recognized for its best practice in utilizing information and communications technology (ICT). She knew in her heart that Baguio was way better than the other local governments that have joined the search for digital governance.
She personally went to benchmark with other local governments and started researching about the Digital Governance Award. In the same year, she introduced the said award to the city.
The Digital Governance Award is an annual search for best practices among local governments in utilizing information and communications technology in various categories to effectively deliver public services to its constituents and business stakeholders. It is a joint project of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), the National Information and Communications Technology Confederation of the Philippines (NICT) and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).
De Leon encouraged the Management Information Technology Division (MITD) of the city government then under the City Budget office to package some of the systems that were already developed, then pushed them to submit the re-packaged systems as entries to the said competition. She initiated the active participation of the city government to the DICT-DILG-NICT Digital Governance Award.
In 2018, the city received its first award for its entry to the Customer Empowerment that garnered third place.
In November 2019, the city bagged the Best in e-GOV Systems for Global Competitiveness category award for developing world—class information, communication technology systems at par with international standards.
In 2020, Baguio placed third in contact tracing and in 2021, the city was bestowed with 3 first place awards that include the Baguio Inoculation Digital Application (BIDA), the electronic budgeting, procurement, inventory and monitoring system and the Docutracker.