Concession Agreement Signing for Civil Registry System IT Project (Phase II)

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and Unisys Public Sector Services Corporation (Unisys) signed the Php 1.59 billion Civil Registry System – Information Technology Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Project Phase II (CRS-ITP2) concession agreement on September 30, 2016. Present during the signing are National Statistician and Civil Registrar General Dr. Lisa Grace S. Bersales and Unisys representative Mr. Juan Ingersol Castro.

The CRS-ITP2 will involve the computerization of the civil registry operations of the PSA. It is designed to collect, access, store, maintain and manage civil registry documents and the specimen signatures of all city and municipal registrars using imaging technology. It will also include production of vital statistics through a wider channel including (1) additional 40 CRS outlets to complete the 80 outlets to be established in each of the provinces; (2) LGU operated outlets; (3) telephone-based and web-based channels; and, (4) will also allow integration with other government offices.

The project is also seen to provide enhanced frontline civil registry services such as copy issuance of birth, marriage and death certificates, authentication, Certificate of No Marriage/Advisory on Marriage and the new services which includes Cenodeath, Premium Annotation, Viewable Online, Docprint and Transaction Verification. CRS-ITP2 is expected to take two years to develop, involving the following components: (i) construction of a new building and (ii) the development of a completely new IT system.

The project was approved by the National Economic and Development Authority Board on July 2015. The PSA released the Invitation to Prequalify and Bid on September 2015 to which there were 11 prospective bidders, 4 of which submitted qualification documents and 3 were prequalified namely Morpho-Filmetrics-Frey Consortium, Unisys Public Sector Services Corp. and PNJ Partnership Consortium.

During the Bid submission date last June 10, 2016, only Unisys submitted a bid offer. As in the case of a lone bid under Section 9.3 of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the BOT Law, the project was sent back to Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) for the approval of rate of return and subsequently undergone two (2) rounds of direct negotiation to finally meet the conditions set out by the ICC. After successful negotiations, PSA issued Notice of Award to Unisys on September 9, 2016.