WHATEVER happened to the funds set aside in the 1999 national budget to link public schools, libraries, government offices and even state-run corporations on the Internet?

The chair of the House subcommittee on information technology posed the question as he noted the "slow implementation" of the RPWeb, a program initiated as early as the previous Congress with a goal to put virtually the whole government bureaucracy online.

Rep. Leandro Verceles said the 1999 General Appropriations Act directed each of the country's over 8,000 public agencies--from public schools, think tanks, departments, attached offices, to town or city halls--to allocate portions of their respective budgets for Internet access.

However, the Catanduanes representative said many of these agencies have yet to comply with this directive. Worse, he feared concerned officials might have already squandered their RPWeb funds.

Shortly before Congress went on recess, Verceles called on the IT subcommittee to flex its oversight muscles and check out the current extent of RPWeb compliance nationwide.

An inquiry would be under way upon resumption of session late July, as the House starts preliminary hearings on the Year 2000 budget, according to committee sources.

The Verceles initiative came after Congress devoted much of its IT-related legislation this year on the arguably more pressing Y2K problem.

Amid threats of major disruption in basic services caused by this software dating glitch, several bills and resolutions were filed compelling both public and private sectors to be Y2K ready at the advent of the millennium.

The RPWeb program was proposed in House Resolution 890 during the 10th Congress and later translated to Administrative Order 332.

It aims to link the entire government organization through the Internet for faster, cheaper and more efficient response to the citizens' demand for public services, mainly education.

It is also supposed to serve as the "nucleus" for a much grander design for the country's IT capability, the Philippine Information Infrastructure, Verceles said.