Solon questions civil registry contract with foreign firm

Bayan Muna party-list has sought an investigation into the alleged “foreign control” of the country’s civil registry system.

The militant party-list filed House Resolution No. 592, seeking to probe the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) October concession agreement with Unisys Public Sector Services Corp. for the Phase 2 of the Civil Registry System-Information Technology Project (CRS-ITP).

Unisys was the lone bidder for the P1.59-billion project launched under the public-private partnership (PPP) program, as two other prequalified firms did not submit their proposal.

Under the said agreement, the firm is tasked to finance, develop and operate an upgraded civil registry system with higher specifications than the current system, the contract for which will expire in March 2017.

The resolution questioned the award of the concession agreement to Unisys, which was also the firm that first digitized the current civil registry system in 1999. Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate said there were “glaring contractual violations and failures during the project’s first phase, as reported by the Commission on Audit in 2015.”

Zarate noted that Unisys was supposed to have transferred the operations of the civil registry system to the  PSA five years before the contract’s initial expiry in 2012, but the firm supposedly did not comply.

No initiative

“Perplexingly, PSA did not even muster any initiative to take over controlling the civil registry system, even failing to impose sanctions to Unisys despite the latter’s violation of its contractual obligations,” the resolution read.

The resolution added that Unisys’ “seeming intention… not to hand over the civil registry system” can be seen in its alleged failure to train PSA personnel to operate the system.

“Had PSA taken over control of the country’s civil registry system, the government would not have needed the rollout of CRS-ITP 2, thus saving the government billions of pesos. Moreover, revenues would have been solely realized by the government,” the resolution stated.

Zarate also raised the possibility that having a foreign company like Unisys control the civil registry system would allow it to harvest data on Filipino citizens and share them with other clients, such as “various branches of the US armed services and possibly, US intelligence agencies.”

“Whereas, it is imperative that PSA finally take over the operations of the country’s civil registry system, in compliance with the original contract and impose sanctions to Unisys for its violations therein,” the resolution read.