The DILG Regional Office No. V has been selected as one of the three (3) pilot regions for the implementation of the LAN/WAN and IP Telephony Project which is part of the Government-wide Medium-term Information & Communications Technology Harmonization Initiative (MITHI) approved and funded Information System Strategic Plan (ISSP) Project of the Department for CY 2016.

This project will serve as a direct link between the central office and the three (3) pilot regional offices both for data and voice through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

In the first quarter of 2016, the DILG-Information Systems and Technology Management Service (ISTMS) conducted a survey and inventory of all the ICT resources of all the regional offices. To complete the evaluation and in order to come up with the final recommendation for the three (3) pilot regions, ISTMS conducted an on-site validation of ten (10) regional offices to fully examine their readiness in terms of ICT capability focusing on the network infrastructure, building facilities, internet connection speed and stability and availability of server room.

After a thorough review and evaluation, DILG Regional Office No. V was considered as one of the most responsive to the requirements for the establishment of the LAN/WAN IP Telephony project, along with DILG Regional Office No. 8 (Eastern Visayas) and DILG Region X (Northern Mindanao).

On December 12, 2016, the central office deployed all the equipment needed for the installation of the project which includes a firewall, proxy server, network switch, access point, UPS and IP phones. A technical team from ISTMS headed by ITO 1 Danilo Tam , Admin Asst III Efren R. Ramos and Salvador Chua, Jr. of Accent Micro Technologies Inc. (AMTI) installed and configured the basic network for the WAN implementation.

All the remaining 13 regional offices will also be provided with the same network by year 2017. – ( ITO 1 Eden S. Lanuza)