THE Commission on Audit (COA) is pushing the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) to pull records of the country’s past out of musty pages and into the worldwide web.
In the 2020 audit of the NHCP, government auditors grilled agency officials for failure to take advantage of the internet to put out publications and other history materials on its official website and even on its social media account.
While there are materials already digitized, these were not uploaded for public access.
Other books remain only in printed copies which limits their wider distribution.
“The purpose of developing educational materials in various media is to reach a larger number of Filipinos. However, verification of the NHCP website showed that the Publication Section, which should contain information or visual catalog of publications of NHCP, is not available,” the audit team said.
It added that by limiting itself to selling printed copies only in museums, the NHCP is losing out on potential additional source of income.
“Publications should not be limited to printed copies. It should also be made available through electronic copies as another form of media supplementing the increasing demand for electronic books,” the COA added.
In the past two years, the NHCP printed 11,500 of new books under 17 titles, including The Life and Death of a Boy General, General Artemio Ricarte (Vibora), Honor: the Legacy of Jose Abad Santos, and In Dialogue: the Economic Managers of the Marcos Administration.
Out of 11,500 printed copies, only 1,787 have been issued either through sale or given out as complimentary copies.
“The low inventory turn-over rate may signify that only a limited number of people have knowledge on the publications of the NHCP that are available for sale,” the COA pointed out.
The NHCP management agreed to start posting available books and other materials in electronic form on its official website and social media accounts.
