Introduction

Overview of E-TRACS

E-TRACS (Enhanced Tax Revenue Assessment and Collection System) is a software system designed and developed by Rameses Systems Inc. (Rameses). The system's primary goal is to automate real property assessments, business permits licensing and revenue collection operations of local government units (LGU). Through automation, the LGU will become more efficient and improve its reporting accuracy. The system controls the processes through carefully designed business workflows based on the standard operating procedures and guidelines of LGUs.

The use of E-TRACS promotes transparency and good governance since it applies controls for check and balance. Each transaction made is audited, thus making it difficult to do fraudulent activities.

The standard system can be configured for City, Municipality, or Province and is composed of three modules as follows:

Collection (Treasury Revenue Operations)

Real Property Assessment

Business Permits and Licensing

E-TRACS can also be configured for satellite offices of the LGUs like barangays, bus terminals, hospitals, waterworks, markets, etc. This is called micro installations and is a stripped-down version of E-TRACS. The objective is to allow transactions to be collected. The transaction happens to reduce data capture in the main office and ensure on-time collection and remittance.

E-TRACS is designed as a modular platform and runs on the Osiris 2 Enterprise Framework, a proprietary framework of Rameses. The platform hosts small applications called plug-ins. Being a multi-user system, the user can only access these applications if they have the proper authorization and permissions. Because transactions in the system are sensitive and require accountability, E-TRACS has a comprehensive security model. Users are assigned roles and permissions that can be further customized per user. Data passing through the network are encrypted. Each terminal connecting to the server must be registered by the system administrator. Users are required to change passwords from time to time. Besides system-level security, it can also be application-specific; for example, collectors cannot perform collection if they do not have cashbook defined and they do not have accountable forms on hand.  

E-TRACS aims to elevate innovation in tax revenue collection to provide an efficient and transparent local government unit and improve the quality of service to taxpayers.