The site, located http://www.science.ph, is patterned after the US science portal, science.gov. It is the first online information search service in the country that serves as a gateway to consolidated S&T-related information gathered from various institutions in the science community.

"Access to the website has slowed down because of the large volume of visitors. It’s happy problem, but we still have to address this," said Donna-Ruth Montalban, project head of the information technology team from the DoST’s Science and Technology Information Institute (STII).

Based on the usage statistics for the last six months, from a low of 358 hits in December during the site’s beta test, the figure reached a peak of 588,254 in March. During this time, access to the site crawled to an excruciating speed, Montalban said.

The infrastructure supporting the site finally gave in last April when the site went down for two weeks, slashing the May figures into half.

This is the reason why, Montalban said, the agency is currently pursuing financial support to buy an additional server to lighten the load of the lone server, an old HP Proliant ML 350 powered by Intel Xeon processor, powering the site.

"We’re looking if we can ask some money from within DoST. If there’s none, I think we should seek assistance outside of the department," the executive said, adding that the portal was developed early on using funds that formed part of the regular budget of the STII.

But even without the money, the agency is still actively developing the second phase of project which will include additional features and databases from other government agencies such as the DoH, DA, and the DoE.

Montalban said they are also negotiating with PLDT for a dedicated leased line that will be used the agency to maintain the portal. Currently, it is using the broadband connection provided to DoST.