"GSIS should not be blaming computers and databases for inefficient services," said Mr. Rick Bahague, National Coordinator of the Computer Professionals' Union, on the recent Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) IT system crash. "They should be ashamed that their system is crashing. Other companies would have fixed it first, before the public could know of it."

Even before this incident, many members have experienced difficulty in availing of services by GSIS. GSIS now has 20,000 pending claims, according to their press release. The agency has about 1.5 million members.

"A crashing IT system is a perfect smokescreen for GSIS’ inefficiency or is a preparation for diverting funds for the election campaign of the Arroyo Administration," warns Mr. Bahague.

CPU's consultation with its members working on similar systems from various industries have confirmed that a critical system like the GSIS database must have been tested properly, have back-ups and failover set-ups, disaster recovery sites, and is accepted only after thorough testing.

"Unless GSIS failed to be strict on their acceptance protocols, their database system should be running smoothly with proper anticipation of system crashes and disasters." adds Mr. Bahague. "It is also alarming that until now, the full technical details of the IT system crash remain unknown. Computer professionals know that troubleshooting an IT system shouldn’t have taken this long. In the end, the common government employees suffer from GSIS inefficiencies."

The Computer Professionals' Union is encouraging GSIS members to send their complaints to 0907 113 4503. All messages received will be automatically posted to Twitter, a popular microblogging site. This is an effort of CPU to propagate issues using new media tools. Browse
http://www.twitter.com/ict4dpeople for submitted feedbacks.