NBI levels-up at 75

MANILA, Philippines—Growing older but more modern and significant.

This is one of the goals the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) hopes to achieve by year 2020, NBI director Magtanggol Gatdula said during the observance Wednesday of the agency’s 75th anniversary at its headquarters on Taft Avenue in Manila.

First in this thrust for modernization is the NBI Clearance System. The agency has started to implement this year the National Biometric Clearance System (NBCS) whereby applicants’ fingerprints are stored for easier retrieval of records.

“Through the implementation of NBCS, the use of assumed identities in securing NBI clearance certificates will be dramatically minimized,” Gatdula said.

Gatdula also committed to implement the NBI clearance online payment system by December 1 to make the processing much faster and convenient “to our bosses, the Filipino people.”

Gatdula added that the NBI has submitted its Information System Strategic Plan to the National Computer Center, and expressed hope of passage of the NBI Modernization Bill, one version of which is pending plenary debate in the Senate and another undergoing review in a House committee.

He also revealed plans about the cross-organizational National Justice Information System, where NBI will evolve from housing only criminal records to becoming “a central hub for information and biometrics.”

The NBI “diamond” anniversary was attended by Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim, a former NBI chief, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and President Benigno Aquino III.

Aquino thanked the NBI’s 1,100 employees for the agency’s accomplishments the past year, including its campaign against human trafficking which yielded more than 30 arrests and 100 rescues of minors and women and arrests of members of the Western African Drug Syndicate who use Filipinos as drug couriers abroad.