Philippine government builds agency portal

MANILA -- The national Department of Science and Technology (DOST) in the Philippines has launched a Web portal that it hopes will eventually integrate the databases of various government agencies as well as those of public and privately run research institutions.

The portal, located at www.science.ph, initially provides links to about 65 databases belonging to agencies within the DOST, including the Technology Application and Promotions Institute and the Philippine Council for Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development.

DOST officials said the portal uses Web services and Java technology to link open-source and proprietary databases. Users can run queries against individual databases. Future versions of the portal will add advanced research capabilities and an e-commerce tool that can integrate payments for subscriptions to multiple databases.

Briefly noted