Legazpi City Mayor Noel Rosal (File photo)
LEGAZPI CITY – Due to its best practices in business transactions, Legazpi City bagged this year the top plum in the Digital Governance Award (DGA) 2020 under the Government Internal Process (G2I) category, given by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
Second placer was the City of Manila, followed by Alaminos, Pangasinan on third place.
In a phone interview on Tuesday, Legazpi City Mayor Noel Rosal said the awarding was conducted via virtual ceremony last Dec. 11.
He said the feat is the city’s contribution to the call of President Rodrigo Duterte during his inaugural address to take actions to solve the perennial problem of local government units (LGUs) on the kilometric process for the issuance of business permits and licenses.
“Issuance of building permit to our stakeholders is being affected by too much red tape, corruption as it is taking a long time to be approved. With this award it only shows that we’ve done something to address the call of our President and to give our stakeholders a better way of doing business,” Rosal said.
The mayor said the city government started its best practices in 2018 when it applied a new algorithm or new process in reducing the 15-step business transactions down to only three.
“The three steps are online application, online or offline payment, and operating right away. The scheme already allows a business to operate while waiting for the hard copy of the permit as long as they already complied with the payment requirements. The permit could be sent even through a text message,” Rosal said.
He said the award is a clear manifestation that the city has a continuous and sustainable implementation of good governance that has resulted in progress and development.
Rosal also cited the help and collaboration of various government and private stakeholders with the city government.
“We have created something for Legazpi that serves as a template that can be replicated in other LGUS," he said.
Legazpi City has been a recipient of various prestigious awards in recent years under the stewardship of Rosal, including the Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) from the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) for four consecutive years already. (PNA)
