DOF mulls online courses at PTA

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Finance (DOF) it is exploring a plan to provide online training courses to local government treasurers through the Philippine Tax Academy (PTA), possibly in partnership with Huawei Philippines.

During a meeting with Huawei Philippines executives, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said the DOF is considering to offer select online courses and classes through PTA, enabling enrollees to remotely access courses through their own computers, tablets, or smartphones.

“We have the PTA. We can study if the training can be online. Each municipality has a local treasurer, we can do the training online,” Dominguez said.

To achieve this goal, Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran, who oversees the administration of PTA, said the school has submitted to the Department of Information and Communications Technology its three-year Strategic Information Plan.

He said one of the action plans in the roadmap is the establishment of an information system to facilitate knowledge sharing.

During the meeting, Dominguez also proposed the possibility of tapping Huawei’s expertise, which, according to its chief executive officer Ray Zhang, is now in the process of developing its online education program.

In response to Dominguez’s proposal, Shawn Long, Huawei Philippines’ director for government, said the company is ready to offer its ICT solutions and organize workshops to assist the DOF and its attached agencies in migrating to an online system.

He said Huawei is also planning to introduce to the Philippines soon its cloud service, which seeks to reduce costs of businesses.

Huawei has also trained over 6,000 engineers so far in its training center in Parañaque City, according to Long. He said several trainees were also sent to its headquarters in Shenzhen, China for further training.

Launched in February, Dominguez earlier said the PTA—the first of its kind in the country—would provide continuing training to the country’s revenue collectors and administrators to improve their competitiveness, and also sharpen their commitment to their profession and raise their ethical standards.

He said the establishment of the academy is part of the administration’s efforts in professionalizing revenue agencies.