Unisys Public Sector Services Corporation has offered for a 45.5 percent concessionaire’s revenue share for the P1.6-billion Phase II Civil Registry System (CRS) project of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

Unisys proposal though was lower than the 57.87 percent cap set by the PSA from the project’s gross revenue.

“We are very pleased with the financial bid submitted by the lone bidder. We know that this is still subject to detailed evaluation and approval by the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC),” remarked Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center Executive Director Andre Palacios.

Initially, three companies vied for CRS IT Phase 2, PSA’s first PPP project: Unysis, Morpho-Filmetrics-Frey Consortium and PNJ Partnership Consortium. Unisys alone submitted a bid.

Following the norm of lone bids for any PPP project, the Unysis financial proposal have to go back to the ICC for approval.

Notably, the PPP Center chief was optimistic about getting the ICC nod for the project. “Most probably we’ll get it because it’s lower than the cap,” he quipped.

When implemented, the new civil registration system will upgrade the current service levels of the PSA in providing various civil registry documents such as birth, marriage, death and no marriage certificates.

People can get copies of these certificates or get them authenticated within one hour compared to the current two hours. The Certificate of No Marriage (CENOMAR) will also be available within a day compared to the current practice of five days.

The project also includes new services to be offered. The viewable online service allows documents to be accessed through the web using an access code with an expiration code.

This service will be offered to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), the embassies, the Social Security System (SSS) and other transactions requiring these certificates, eliminating document tampering and the chances of fraud.

The system will also allow the public to view document image of the requested certificate by presenting the access code at an outlet within a prescribed validity period. The outlet will print the requested copies on security paper.

Institutional clients such as embassies can avail of the transaction verification services of the CRS so that they can view the request details of a particular civil registry document.

Furthermore, PSA will now issue certificates of no death, which attest that a person’s death record does not appear in the PSA’s database as of a certain date.

This certificate can be used by agencies, such as the SSS, Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), in validating whether a member’s benefit or retirement claim is legitimate.

The CRS IT Phase 2 likewise covers putting up additional CRS outlets nationwide, doubling the existing 40 outlets to 80 CRS outlets.

The project is expected to take two years to develop and involves constructing a new building and developing a completely new IT system.

24 June 2016
By Emmie Abadilla