Cities with fully automated business permitting systems recorded stronger growth in local business tax revenue than cities that had not fully automated their permitting processes, according to a new study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS). The study, titled “Relevance of e-Governance in Revenue Generation among Philippine Cities,” found that cities with fully automated Business Permits and Licensing Systems (BPLS) were associated with an 18.16-percentage-point increase in local business tax (LBT) revenue growth compared with cities that had not fully automated their permitting processes. These cities also recorded higher levels of active business establishments, suggesting that streamlined digital services can encourage business formation and expansion. Authored by PIDS supervising research specialist Tatum Ramos and Vice President Marife Ballesteros , the study examined data from 138 cities to determine whether digitalizing business permitting contribu...
By Carlos V. Cornejo A good book on making big decisions, reveal blind spots and come up with creative methods in solving problems is that of Shane Parrish entitled “The Great Mental Models”. It makes use of the acronym I.F.S to recall the mental models of Inversion , First Principle Thinking , and Second-Order Thinking . Inversion means if you are having a hard time solving a problem, try to look at that problem in another perspective by solving the opposite problem. Instead of asking, “How can I make a really good presentation video?” ask, “How can I make a really bad presentation video?” If you come up with a list of how to make a bad video it might be using a PowerPoint with no images and just pure texts, use a monotone voice that makes the presentation boring and put your audience to sleep, and make it longer than it needs to be. Since you’ve imagined what a bad presentation looks like you can now come up with the criteria of a good one if you inv...