ILOILO CITY — The city government here will launch on Friday its own mobile application, making its services more accessible to the public.
This was announced by Mayor Jose Espinosa III Monday as he cited that the ‘Iloilo City Mobile App’ will make a great impact to the city as citizens can access its services online.
“We are one of the priorities of Microsoft for this project,” he said.
The application is being built with the support of Microsoft.
Espinosa met with Dr. Astrid Tuminez, Microsoft’s regional director for Corporate, External and Legal Affairs for Southeast Asia, last week.
In an interview, Tuminez said that they have been working to create a portal for the city. She said that they also worked for other cities before but the one they are working on for Iloilo City is more intensive.
“We have been working to create a city portal, which is City Serve. The idea of that portal is to allow citizens of Iloilo to access city service through the internet,” she said.
“Cities like Iloilo can continue to enhance their technological backbone, so that someday when you need business permits, you need passport, apply for drivers license and many other services, you should be able to do it online,” she added.
In addition to helping build the portal, she said that Microsoft also holds seminar for civil servants and other stakeholders on technology.
“The more people understand technology, the more they’ll likely to use it. So my message to the mayor and the citizens is start using it because if you don’t use it you, then you don’t how it can improve your lives,” she said.
The portal initially features job bulletin, citizen on patrol, citizen ID card, doing business, youth affairs, moments, news and events and discover Iloilo.
Meanwhile, Tuminez hoped that her colleagues at Microsoft will continue to “collaborate” with the city after she leaves to assume as the first female president of the Utah Valley University in the State of Utah in September.
Tuminez, a proud Ilongga, completed her elementary and high school education at the Colegio del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus based in this city. (Perla Lena/PNA)
