Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the Philippine government, procurement and enterprise technology terms used across this site — written for the reader who is scoping a system, not for the reader who already builds them.
Philippine government
LGU (Local Government Unit)
A province, city, municipality or barangay, each with its own elected officials, budget and ordinance-making power under the Local Government Code. An LGU procures and operates its own systems, which is why two neighbouring municipalities can run entirely different software for the same service.
Barangay
The smallest administrative unit of Philippine government, below the municipality or city. Barangay-level records and certifications are frequently the first identity document a resident holds, which makes them a common starting point for a citizen register.
Sanggunian
The legislative council of an LGU — Sangguniang Panlalawigan at province level, Sangguniang Panlungsod for a city, Sangguniang Bayan for a municipality. It passes ordinances and adopts resolutions, and its records are what a legislative information system manages.
Ordinance and resolution
An ordinance is a local law: it has permanent effect and carries penalties. A resolution expresses the council's position or authorises a specific act, and generally does not. The distinction matters in a records system because they have different lifecycles, approval paths and publication requirements.
CDRRMO
City or Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office — the LGU office responsible for preparedness and emergency response. It is the usual occupant of a local government command center and the usual owner of its CCTV and communications requirements.
DICT
The Department of Information and Communications Technology, the national agency responsible for ICT policy, standards and the government's own digital infrastructure. Its issuances shape what national systems an LGU platform is expected to interoperate with.
DILG
The Department of the Interior and Local Government, which supervises LGUs and issues the memoranda and compliance requirements that reach them. Many LGU reporting obligations that appear in a system's requirements originate here.
Law and compliance
RA 10173 (Data Privacy Act)
The Philippine law governing personal data. It requires a lawful basis for processing, proportionality in what is collected, security measures appropriate to the risk, breach notification, and a designated Data Protection Officer. Sensitive personal information — including health data — carries stricter requirements.
RA 11032 (Ease of Doing Business Act)
Sets maximum processing periods for government transactions — three, seven or twenty working days depending on complexity — and requires LGUs to streamline and automate them, including a unified business permit application. It is the statutory reason most LGU permit digitalisation programmes exist.
RA 9184 (Government Procurement Reform Act)
Governs how national and local government bodies buy goods and services, including software. Opportunities are posted on PhilGEPS and evaluated by the agency's Bids and Awards Committee against the terms of reference.
PhilGEPS
The Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System — the official portal where government procurement opportunities are posted and where suppliers register. A supplier without a PhilGEPS registration cannot be awarded a government contract.
BAC (Bids and Awards Committee)
The committee within a procuring agency that runs a procurement: it issues the bidding documents, receives and opens bids, evaluates them against the terms of reference, and recommends award. It evaluates what is written down, which is why the terms of reference decides the outcome.
TOR (Terms of Reference)
The document defining what is being procured: scope, deliverables, acceptance criteria, timelines, and the obligations that survive delivery such as support and ownership of the source code. In government procurement it is the specification against which every bid is judged.
IRR (Implementing Rules and Regulations)
The detailed rules issued to put a Philippine statute into operation. The IRR, not the act itself, usually carries the specifics a system has to satisfy — timeframes, formats, notification windows — so it is the document worth reading when a requirement is unclear.
NPC (National Privacy Commission)
The independent body that administers and enforces RA 10173. It registers data processing systems, receives breach notifications, issues advisory opinions and investigates complaints.
Personal information controller and processor
The controller decides why and how personal data is processed; the processor acts on the controller's instructions. In a government project the agency is normally the controller and the vendor the processor, and the distinction determines who carries which obligation under RA 10173.
DPO (Data Protection Officer)
The individual accountable for an organisation's compliance with RA 10173. The role is a legal requirement for entities processing personal data, and it is a named person rather than a shared responsibility.
Government systems
BPLS (Business Permit and Licensing System)
The system through which an LGU receives, assesses, approves and renews business permits. Digitising it means one application record, automated fee computation, inter-office routing and a status the applicant can see — the capabilities RA 11032's processing periods depend on.
Legislative tracking system
A system that manages measures through their lifecycle — filing, committee, readings, approval, publication — together with agendas, session records, voting and the document register. Its practical value is that the current text and status of a measure stop depending on which staff member holds the file.
Citizen card
A physical credential issued by an LGU that identifies a resident across offices. The card itself is the least important part: what makes it work is the register behind it and the service that verifies a card against that register at the moment of use.
QR verification
Checking a credential by scanning a code that carries an identifier and a signature, then resolving it against the issuing register. Done correctly, no personal data is printed in the code — which is what allows a lost or revoked card to stop working immediately.
Command center
A staffed facility that consolidates surveillance, communications and incident coordination for a locality. Its effectiveness is set by camera placement, backhaul capacity, storage retention and shift staffing — not by the size of the video wall.
RPTAS (Real Property Tax Administration System)
The system an LGU uses to maintain the property assessment roll and to bill and collect real property tax. It is commonly the largest existing data set in an LGU and therefore a frequent integration target for any new citizen-facing service.
Enterprise technology
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
A single integrated system covering finance, procurement, inventory, manufacturing and related functions, so those areas share one set of records. Its value comes from that shared data, which is also why an ERP implementation is mostly a data and process exercise rather than a software installation.
SAP HANA
SAP's in-memory database platform, and the foundation for its current ERP generation. Moving to it is a migration of the underlying platform, which is a different exercise from re-implementing the business configuration on top.
ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)
The scheduled movement of data out of source systems, into a common shape, and into a store designed for analysis. It exists because reporting directly against live transactional systems slows them down and still produces inconsistent numbers.
Infrastructure as code
Defining servers, networks and permissions in version-controlled files rather than configuring them by hand. The benefit is reproducibility: an environment can be rebuilt after a failure, and a change can be reviewed before it reaches production.
Fixed asset register
The authoritative record of what an organisation owns, where it is, who holds it and what it is worth after depreciation. Its usefulness depends on covering the full lifecycle through disposal — an asset written off but never removed distorts every later count.
LMS (Learning Management System)
A platform for delivering and recording training: onboarding, role-based learning paths, assessments, certifications and their expiry. The recording matters more than the delivery, because certification lapses are usually discovered by a client or an auditor rather than internally.
Infrastructure
Structured cabling
The standardised cabling system connecting a building or campus, designed as one estate rather than run point to point. It outlives most equipment attached to it, so it is specified for the bandwidth expected at the end of its life rather than for today's requirement.
Fiber backbone
The high-capacity optical links joining sites or buildings, onto which local networks connect. In a multi-site government estate it is what makes centralised services — surveillance, telephony, shared applications — possible at all.
PABX
Private Automatic Branch Exchange: the telephone system that routes calls within an organisation and out to the public network. In a command center it is the coordination channel that has to keep working when other systems are degraded.
Managed print services
An arrangement in which a provider supplies, installs, maintains and replenishes printing equipment under one contract. Secure erasure of the storage inside multi-function devices at contract exit is part of it, because those devices retain images of what passed through them.