By Robert Maico
CALAMBA CITY, Laguna Oct 1 (PNA) – Two government agencies conducted a forum on Calabarzon Local Government Units dubbed “Road to Smart City” held Wednesday at Crimson Hotel in Alabang, Muntinlupa City
A comprehensive discussion commenced on how the LGUs could benefit from this concept towards building a more reliable local government.
“Smart City “ is a type of city that uses new technologies to make them more liveable, functional, competitive and modern through the use of new technologies in the promotion of innovation and knowledge management.
Smart City is bringing together six key fields of performance: the government, economy, mobility, environment, citizenship, quality of living through the Information and communication technologies (ICT).
Foreign experts from IBM and Microsoft talked about the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 18091:2014, an international standard around public policy and services aligned to minimum citizen’s needs which is the starting point to implement a quality management system.
Dondi Mapa, national technology officer, Microsoft Philippines explained a CityNext assessment uses 18091:2014 to understand the city’s political agenda and the priorities on this international standard governance practice. The objective is to align technology with public policy to build together the digital agenda that need to partner with governments and cities to build educational, safer, healthier and modern cities.
Mapa expounded on the benefits of 18091:2014 for local governments, to generate positive impact on regional, national government, building a coherent value chain for the citizens.
Mapa also said the international standard consulting methodology allows cities to identify what they lack the most and build their priorities making a practical and simple action plan that impacts on their development plan.
IBM Philippines chief technologist and client technical adviser Mr. Lope Doromal discussed the intelligent operations center for Smarter cities, highlighting the leverage information with near-real time visibility into key data to drive better decisions, anticipating problems to identify, manage and mitigate incidents that affect city operations and coordinating resources and processes to respond to situations rapidly and effectively.
In an interview with PNA, Dr. Alexander Madrigal, Regional Director DOST IV-A, said the forum aims to promote Smart City to LGUs to enroll as smart city, making easy for foreign investors to identify which area could be bent for investment purposes.
Madrigal said Sta. Rosa City, Laguna is the pilot city for being smart city with smarter government and being a business hub in the region.
Regional Director DILG IV-A, Director Josefina Castillo-Go mentioned that the invited 18 cities from Calabarzon and municipalities that qualified in competitiveness survey attended this forum.
She urged the 13 cities and five municipalities present at the forum to decide immediately if their respective local governments want to enroll to be a Smart City. (PNA)