The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) opened the financial bid of Unisys Public Sector Services Corporation for the Phase II of the Civil Registry System (CRS). Unisys proposed a 45.5% concessionaire’s revenue share, which is lower than the 57.87% cap set by the PSA from the project’s gross revenue.
Initially, there were three companies vying for the project namely Morpho-Filmetrics-Frey Consortium, Unisys Public Sector Services Corp. and PNJ Partnership Consortium. Unisys is the lone bidder which submitted a bid for the CRS IT Phase 2 project.
During an interview at the sidelines of the project’s financial submission, PPP Center Executive Director Andre Palacios expressed satisfaction over the bidding process. “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 ICC,” he said.
As in the case of a lone bid for any PPP project, it will have to go back to the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) for approval.
The PPP Center chief was optimistic about getting the ICC nod for the project, saying that “most probably we’ll get it because it’s lower than the cap.”
When implemented, the new civil registration system will upgrade the current service levels of the PSA in providing the various civil registry documents such as birth, marriage, death and no marriage certificates. Getting copies of these certificates or getting them authenticated will be available within one hour compared to the current two (2) hours. The Certificate of No Marriage (CENOMAR) will also be available within a day compared to the current practice of 5 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 DFA, the embassies, SSS and other transactions requiring these certificates. This eliminates 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.
PSA will now also 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 Social Security System (SSS), Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), in validating whether a member’s benefit/retirement claim is legitimate.
Another scope of the project is putting up additional CRS outlets nationwide from the existing 40 outlets to 80 CRS outlets.
CRS IT Phase II is the first PPP project of the PSA.
