A Case of a Career Womans Legacy to a City

By Edgardo P. Sabalvoro

Introduction With globalization, employees in private companies have to reckon with its impending effects e.g. downsizing, buy-outs, mergers, acquisitions or upsizing. In Government Service, the call for streamlining the bureaucracy, of getting rid of graft and corruption have similar effects to casual and even regular employees. Improving government services is reflected in shorter processing time, covering more clients and satisfying them. Many government employees, especially those with long years in service, are placed in a state of anxiety when the mere suggestion of reorganization or re-engineering is mentioned or even when new technologies are introduced. Simply by explaining the effects of organizational change, one cannot guarantee that every government employee will routinely comprehend and accept any change in the organization. To successfully understand changes in any workplace, employees and graduate school students of Public Administration must grasp basic concepts related to the nature of organizational change. This is a short case study of Marikina Citys Treasurers Office decision to automate its entire real property tax operations in just two months. This is also a story of a woman who made a difference. Marikina City is the Philippines' most awarded and successful local government. Background Marikina's total manual records both active and archived are in the millions. Each taxation record contains operational data. For Real Property Tax Administration (RPTA) alone," the City maintains over half a million records." The City was only able to account for annual tax delinquencies valued for only PhP40M in 1992. The Tax process actually begins in the City Assessor's Office. This is the unit of the city government, which is tasked to perform daily appraisal and assessment of real properties on record through the conduct of an actual site inspection. "When 240,000 records are made or cancelled by my office, the Land Tax Division creates and cancels about 20% or 48,000 counterpart records," says Sonny S. P. Ramos, City Assessor. "Most often than not, we can't immediately send updates to the Land Tax Division. My office manages all the records related to the real properties and everyday we go out to assess real properties. We make records of the relevant information for each inspected property. All these may look simple but it is not. He further explains, "For every real property, we maintain five major records. Our annual transactions affect roughly 15% of our records or estimated 120,000 new records, we cancel and archive the same number each year." The Land Tax Division services 36,000 taxpayers annually. All tax computations including discounts and penalties are coursed through this division. The Land Tax Division likewise handles the issuance of official receipts and distribution of tax bills and notices of delinquencies for all the 82,000 real properties on record. Celia De Guzman, Land Tax Division Chief, deals with real property tax computations and collections. Celia describes her work, "The Land Tax Division is tasked to make new index cards based on new records submitted by the City Assessor's office. The Division then cancels old index cards, creates new ones and similarly posts the corresponding payments on entirely new index cards." Celia adds, "The Land Tax Division usually waits for two months before new records from the assessor are handed to the Division."

Computerization, Anyone? In December 1997, this local government decided to automate its entire real property tax operations under the leadership of Naty Cabalquinto, the City Treasurer then. Before she retires from government service, she wanted to leave a legacy to her constituents - the people of Marikina. She got the idea from Erwin Dinoso, a mere local Revenue Collector II. Amidst all the criticisms and limited resources, she convinced all department heads and prepared a plan to computerize the citys tax revenue generating system. This included the following - a new structure and workflows, new tasks and work teams, computer equipment and technology. Trainings and team building activities were incorporated. Being familiar with the local governments financial workings, she even sourced a budget for her pet project. As a result, all Mayor Bayani F. Fernando did was to read and approve such plan. To do this, a project team was formed and was composed of various department heads to first conduct an assessment of such innovations as implemented in other cities of the country. She herself, along with other members of the team, visited a number of local government units. She then invited various software companies to present a bid for IT solutions that are suited to her offices operational requirements. Amellar solutions won, because of the price and the technology. She further negotiated with them to lower the price to accommodate their limited resources. To ensure change will be effected smoothly, meetings were held to convince all employees that the change is inevitable and justified. She shared with them her plan of leaving an indelible mark in the City, before she retires. Casual and even regular employees were reluctant at first. A big number of employees were threatened by fear of losing their jobs with the entry of computers. Many were convince when Ms. Cabalquinto assured regular employees that they would not be terminated, as per CSC policy. According to Edwin Dinoso, the last group of employees to accept the idea belongs to the Assessors Office, specifically members of the Land Tax Division. Casual employees were retrenched and were given their severance pay. All were asked to reapply and they later joined 2 new projects of the Assessors Office. All systems go Erwin Dinoso, a Local Revenue Collection Officer II and only computer literate employee among the rank and file, coordinated with Amellar solutions in implementing the technical aspect of the plan. He likewise coordinated for the technical training of employees. To fast tract the encoding of records, Amellar Solutions trained employees and hired encoders to complete the task. They even got paid for their overtime work. Computers, network and software installations including customization and database buildup were completed in a record time of less than two (2) months. In that time, the City's real property tax administration was deployed and in service. Monitoring systems for group and individual performance were likewise set in place. Aggressive Results Emilia Paz of the Assessor's Office is the oldest employee in the department. She issues corresponding certifications and tax declarations as requested by taxpayers. Emilia says, "I am 60 years old and have been in the service for 41 years. I started working in 1958 and used Underwood to type payrolls. I never had a computer background but I learned to use one in less than three weeks. I thought learning to use computers was very difficult, now I think using the typewriter posts a greater challenge." Celia, the Land Tax Division Chief is 58 years old. It was her first time to handle computers when the new system was deployed. "I was trained in just two weeks," she adds." The Land Tax Division does not make index cards anymore. These were eliminated when the new revenue system was introduced. Searching records is now an easy task compared to the past. The system already computes and prints out official receipts, which

increases our productivity and saves a lot of time. We used to work until 7:00 PM when daily collections were balanced manually. Now we fully accomplish all our work by 5:00 PM, we work more in less time." "Preparing reports manually for the Department of Finance usually takes two weeks. Currently with the successful implementation of our revenue system, we can do it in one day," says Erwin. Fernando Gomez, Assistant System Administrator of the Assessor says, "its tight security features have enhanced accountability." Transactions such as transfer of ownership would now only take five minutes, compared to at least two hours when everything was processed manually. We no longer prepare labor intensive and time consuming reports, it automatically generates these reports for us and even more." Sonny, the Assessor, says, "Now we have more time and more people for field work. our field activities have become very efficient." Previously the City was only able to account for annual tax delinquencies valued for only PhP40M. The new revenue system provided an opportunity for the City not only to effectively identify tax delinquencies but also with accuracy. In January 1999 alone, PhP250M worth of tax delinquencies were identified and processed by the new revenue system. Immediately this results to 526% increase in efficiency, performance and employees' productivity in less than two years. The City is now very aggressive in its automation efforts. The master plan, as spearheaded by the City Treasurer, is to completely automate the revenue generation process and operations of the City Government. As simple as the collection of parking fees to possibly all other major revenue earners. In the end, she hopes to link her entire revenue database with the other internal databases to make her collection efforts more efficient. This will lead to further improving the City's ability to deliver basic services. Ms. Cabalquinto believes that working in the most awarded and most successful Philippine local government; Marikina executives have accepted change as an inevitable part of progress. The rank and file, who would at time resist change, have come to realize that a successful automation still needs people to make it happen. If they are willing to learn, it can make work easier and faster. But with the term of the Mayor Fernando about to end by year 2001, Ms. Cabalquinto is hopeful and yet remains on guard. She continues to advice her successor not to return to the old system and to defend the gains of the new system. She is aware that the next mayor might not ensure that all the good things will be continued. For the threat of the Citys reverting back to the old graft-prone tax revenue generation system still remains. She has recently retired from the service and is now serving as financial consultant of the incumbent Mayor. Her next plan is to upgrade the existing server and include the Engineering department in the computerization. That, if funds are available or if her services will be required when the new City Mayor assumes office next year. ----------------------Major parts of the case study were taken from an Internet article entitled Success Story: Marikina City and Informix and actual interviews.