DILG Region 3, in its effort to further strengthen partnership with the concerned local governance stakeholders, continues to enhance its role for the mobilization and coordination of the application of resources and pooling of experts for local governance capacity development. To sustain the gains of the DILG Region 3 Webpage Development Project implementation for LGUs and in consonance with the national government's thrust to tread the "Tuwid na Daan" amongst LGUs particularly in the tenets of transparency and accountability, DILG Region 3 conducted a regional training on website development dubbed as Website Empowerment for Better Local Governance (WEB-LG) on March 29-31, 2016 at Royal Garden Golftel, Angeles City.

The activity was carried out in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology – Information and Communication Technology Office (ICTO). It aimed at continuously equipping the LGUs in the development/enhancement of their respective website thru the on-line publishing of basic facts/characteristics; tourist investment attractions; and posting of their affairs and transactions by putting the value of Transparency and Accountability and in compliance with the Full Disclosure Policy (FDP) of the DILG in order to create awareness for their intended audience and deliver public service more effectively and efficiently.

The activity further aimed for LGUs to have a .gov.ph official website that will be part of the web portal to link LGUs in the region to the DILG regional website and use the latest version of Joomla as one of the Web Development / Content Management System (CMS) tool under Administrative Order No. 39.

The training covered six modules namely, Module 1: A.O. 39 Principles and Introduction to Joomla Content Management System (CMS); Module 2: Work Around with Joomla Government Website Template (GWT); Module 3: Menu Management; Module 4: Incorporating Extensions and Plug-ins, Module 4: Incorporating Extensions Module 5: Web Accessibility; Module 6: Search Engine Optimization, Data Security and Maintenance.

It was attended by 25 (19 male and 6 female) participants from 14 LGUs in the region composed of Baler and Casiguran in Aurora; Mariveles and Morong in Bataan; Bocaue, Norzagaray, and Plaridel in Bulacan; Arayat, Macabebe and San Simon in Pampanga; Moncada in Tarlac; and Candelaria, Castillejos and San Felipe in Zambales.
Resource speakers tapped for the activity were both DOST-ICTO certified trainers in the persons of Mr. Mark Anthony G. Portabes, MMDA Consultant and Front-End Web Developer of Breinsoft Technologies and Mr. Gregorio I. Iyo, Jr., Information Systems Analyst II of the Department of Energy (DOE), Central Office.

Mr. Alji Tayag, IT Officer and Concurrent Business Permit and Licensing Officer of San Simon, Pampanga shared their best practices in the development of their website particularly on its contents and their computerized BPLS where the municipality was recognized and adjudged as National e-Governance awardee in 2013 by the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines.

Each participating LGU also formulated their action plan for the next steps to be undertaken to pursue the on-line publishing of their website outputs.

At the end of the 3-day training, Certificates of Appreciation and Certificates of Participation were awarded to the resource speakers and participants, respectively. Impressions were likewise solicited from the participants where most of them appreciated the learnings they gained from the training which further honed their IT skills and enabled them to produce and enhance their respective LGU website