Multimedia Reporter
Patricia Mirasol
Created to streamline movement for frontliner workers and essential goods, RapidPassPH enables frontliners to easily acquire quarantine passes that can be used to quickly move through quarantine checkpoints. The system also ensures that only authorized frontliners, skeletal workforces, and essential goods will be able to pass through.
This week, the operations of RapidPassPH was formally handed over to the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and the Philippine National Police (PNP), following the successful completion of RapidPassPH 1.0.
The platform was built in under 30 days through the efforts of the volunteers of the DEVCON Community of Technology Experts (DCTx) together with its partnership with the DOST, DICT, AFP, and PNP.
The PNP Joint Task Force COVID Shield, led by Police Lt. General Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, will enforce RapidPassPH’s full implementation throughout the Quarantine Control Points (QCPs) of Metro Manila. PLDT facilitated the implementation by donating 540 phones as scanners for the checkpoints.
“We would like to thank the DEVCON volunteers for coming up with this innovative solution which has eased the burden for our personnel in quarantine checkpoints,” said DOST Secretary Fortunato T. de la Pena.
“We would like to thank our partners, DICT, PNP, and DOST-NCR for working together in deploying RapidPass,” he said. “We also thank our partners from the private sector – Microsoft, PLDT, and SM – for donating phones to be used by PNP personnel at QCPs and bandwidth for the operation of RapidPass.”
The RapidPassPH Coordination Group, formed by the DOST, DICT, PNP, and DEVCON, will ensure the continuous and effective operation and implementation of RapidPassPH.
RapidPassPH will continue to receive updates and system improvements from DCTx as the country continues to implement different versions of community quarantines. DCTx in particular will continue to focus on other projects still in the works that will support the frontliners and the Filipino people against the coronavirus.
