DOST employees to get laptops

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Science and Technology (DOST)’s Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO) has set the technical specifications of the laptop computer that will be purchased by the government for its employees.

DOST Undersecretary Louis Casambre said the ICTO and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) were still finishing the terms of reference for the public bidding that the two departments will jointly conduct to procure about 250,000 laptops.

Casambre said the specs for the laptop include a 15-inch screen with i5 processor performance and security features TPM, encrypted SSD and Windows 8.1 PRO.

The laptop procurement is being pursued by the DOST ICTO and DBM under their joint Medium-term Information & Communications Technology Harmonization Initiative project that seeks to streamline all ICT procurement and development projects of national government agencies to ensure uniform and harmonized computers and equipment used by government employees.

Under MITHI, the DOST and DBM is seeking to purchase more than 250,000 laptop computers in a three-year program in an ambitious move to provided all government employees laptop computers and turn them into “e-civil servants.”

Under the program, DBM will be purchasing 95,000 laptops in 2014, and then 80,000 in 2015 and 2016 until all national government employees from Salary Grade 4 and above will each have a laptop computer.