(Continued from June 2)
IN FAIRNESSS to many mass media organizations, they are now using their infrastructure for public service programming, a good thing that social media websites are also doing. What seems to be lacking in this overall equation is the use of ICT and multimedia on the part of national government agencies (NGAs) and local government units (LGUs), for the delivery of public service programs. For example, not too many NGAs and LGUs are engaging the services of business process outsourcing (BPO) providers, despite the fact that our country is supposedly the call center capital of the world.
To a large extent, it could be said that the BPO industry is really just an offshoot of the customer relations management (CRM) technology. Although CRM technology has been around for many years, it is widely known that not too many NGAs and LGUs are using it, at least not as much as the private sector is already using it.
As we already know it, the private sector is already widely using voice, non-voice, live chat and video conferencing as their CRM tools, using as well BPO services as their means of delivery. To be specific, the private sector is using OTT and VVOIP technologies for video conferencing.
As it is now, it could be said that the NGAs and the LGUs are more inclined to use in-person tools as the principal means of delivering their public service programs. What this means is that for the most part, their clients or applicants have to physically go to their brick and mortar offices in order to transact with them, using paper forms for the most part.
To change for the better, it is now time for these NGAs and LGUs to have a paradigm shift in the delivery of their public service programs, and the only way for them to do that is to start using CRM technology.
To effectively start using CRM technology, the NGAs and LGUs have to comply with the Electronic Commerce Act (ECA) when it comes to the admissibility of electronic evidence, as provided for in that law.
As that law provides, there is now supposed to be data parity between electronic evidence and paper evidence, meaning that both should be now equally admissible. If only these NGAs and LGUs would accept the legality of data parity, there would be no more need for their clients to physically go to their brick and mortar offices in order to transact with them, since these could now be done online.
As I see it, many government employees who are in charge of delivering public services would always require their clients to submit the paper evidence, out of fear that the Commission on Audit (COA) would eventually disallow the transactions if these are processed solely on the basis of electronic evidence.
Be that as it may, perhaps the solution to that is for the COA to officially declare that the legality of data parity is now acceptable to them, meaning to say that electronic evidence is now equally admissible just like paper evidence. To give credit where credit is due, the Supreme Court has already declared long ago that facsimile copies sent through fax machines are already equally admissible as the original paper documents./PN
