The Philippines will have access to successful e-government solutions implemented in India and, later on, China following the establishment of the local Center of Excellence (CoE), a government-private sector initiative with Oracle Corp., HP and Linux vendor Red Hat.

Located at the National Computer Center in Diliman, Quezon City, the CoE aims to develop low-cost solutions designed to automate government processes and front-end services. The Philippine CoE is the first of its kind in the Southeast Asian region.

Oracle, HP and Red Hat established the first e-Governance CoE in India two years ago. Meanwhile, a similar initiative will be rolled out in China sometime next year, said Keith Budge, Oracle vice president for Asia Pacific.

"We are hoping to leverage on the experience we"ve had in India and, now, the Philippines. Our idea is to network these two CoEs with future CoEs, including the one we are going to establish in China," Budge told reporters during the launch of the Philippine CoE last week.

Budge said the China CoE will similarly be a collaboration between the three vendors on one hand and the Beijing University on the other. Red Hat is joining the Philippine CoE project through its local distributor Touch Solutions Inc.

The Oracle executive mentioned that the India CoE model has been successful in bringing ICT down to the local government level. He cited one project which automated the annual registration of some 800,000 women members of rural cooperatives in India.

The players behind this CoE model promised to make available to the Philippines e-government applications that have been successfully implemented by the initial CoE in India.

At the same time, the Philippine CoE is intended to serve as a model for similar government-private sector collaborations in other countries in the region. According to HP and Oracle, the governments of Malaysia and Vietnam have already expressed interest after hearing of the Philippine CoE.

Test-bed

At the same time, the CoE is intended to provide the means for local government agencies to test and experiment with solutions that suit their requirements.

The CoE houses HP servers that are all running on Linux and feature Oracle applications. HP, Oracle and Red Hat, however, declined to mention how much capital investment was made for the Philippine CoE.

During the launch, the CoE exhibited initial applications developed by NCC meant for use by government agencies including an "e-library", which connects five state-run libraries, and the "e-Real Property Tax System" piloted in some local government units.

Tim Diaz de Rivera, NCC director general, said the CoE will provide government decision-makers with benchmarks and tools which can be useful in their implementation of e-government programs.

"We have offered the CoE to COA (Commission on Audit) as a venue where they can run the NGAS (National Government Accounting System)," Rivera said. NGAS, developed by COA with the help of a third-party developer, is designed to be used by all government agencies.

The Department of Science and Technology has developed a version of Linux, called Bayanihan Linux, which it distributed to several government agencies to try out and use. Bayanihan Linux is also being demonstrated in the CoE.

Yashi Kant, country manager of Oracle Philippines, said the CoE will support agencies which have gone ahead in deploying solutions running other flavors of Linux, including Bayanihan Linux.

"If a solution needs to be prototyped or demonstrated, they (government agencies) can use the infrastructure of the CoE. They can gain leverage on other applications from the other CoEs as well," Kant said.

First Mover

NCC has been advocating the use of open-source technologies such as Linux as an alternative to proprietary platforms, especially Microsoft?s Windows.

Virgilio ?Ver? Peña, Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT) chairman, encouraged other vendors to initiate similar collaborative programs with the government to promote e-government solutions.

"We want to offer government agencies as many options as possible," Peña said, noting that Oracle, HP and Red Hat will naturally have a "first-mover advantage" in pitching the CoE concept to the government.

He added that agencies can use the CoE"s facilities to test solutions but have the option of eventually adopting other platforms.

"The primary advantage of the consortium lies in the fact that users will already be familiar with their products because they will be using them to test their solutions," Peña noted.