Digital Lifestyle

Secretary Virgilio Peña takes charge of mapping out the country’s ICT roadmap

By Jose Solomon B. Cortez

Peña hopes to link up all of the relationship of the citizen to government by setting up customer-driven applications systems

The Philippines' ICT roadmap has been the buzz of the tech community lately, what with the unveiling of grand plans of generating one million ICT-related jobs by the end of the decade and talks of creating a massive ICT infrastructure that would stretch all the way from Baguio in the north to Zamboanga City in the south. The roadmap promises a lot and with the promises come a lot of daunting challenges for those involved in its implementation.

The agency tasked to oversee the drafting of the country’s ICT masterplan is the newly-created Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), the forerunner of what is hoped to be the Department of ICT in the near future. Under EO 269 signed on 12 January 2004 and amended by EO 334 on 20 July 2004, the CICT is “the primary policy, planning, coordinating, implementing, regulating, and administrative entity of the executive branch of government that will promote, develop, and regulate integrated and strategic ICT systems and reliable and cost-efficient communication facilities and services.”

Presently, CICT’s top officials are conducting brainstorming sessions with various stakeholders in the ICT sector to flesh out the ICT roadmap. At the helm of all these frenzied planning sessions is CICT Chairman Virgilio Peña. Coming directly from his prior assignments as Undersecretary for ICT at the Department of Transportation and Communications and more recently as Executive Director of the Information Technology and E-Commerce Council, Peña is not a greenhorn in the realm of public service. His earlier incarnations in the private sector as Chief Information Officer of San Miguel Corporation and as Country President and General Manager of IBM only prove that he is a heavy hitter in the local tech industry.

Given his prestigious position as the government’s de facto CIO and working on specific instructions from the President herself, Secretary Peña has to look into the most critical and quickest measures to get the ICT roadmap going. This means setting up the implementation framework, critical staffing, telecommunication reforms, and enabling e-laws. Though his agency is severely limited in resources for launching full-blown ICT programs, Peña feels that the CICT will be able to conduct the necessary studies, technical assistance and capacity-building measures which are critical to realize its objectives for the country – one of which is to take ICT to every barangay, school, and business with e-government as a mainstay tool.

Vision of e-Government

The Commission follows on what the IT Council, chaired by the President, started three years ago to give continuity in CICT’s strategies and programs. One of the strategy’s key elements is e-governance which is essentially the computerization of government services with primary focus on the delivery of government services using technology. In the current context of technology, this is delivering services using the internet so that these services can be delivered to homes or any public service point where internet can be made available like internet cafes. This is similar to private sector initiatives like electronic banking where customers can transact business with their banks from the comfort of their homes. This is the vision of e-government -- that in the future, the public does not have to physically go to a government office anymore for whatever services the government is providing right now. Thus, one of the critical developments now is the CICT’s ability to start the ball rolling on these types of government services. Since the Commission was created, it has been identifying and prioritizing which government agencies’ services should be prioritized in terms of funding support to develop their systems.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION Samples of e-Government projects in the pipeline e-LGU development program, involving up to 250 Class C, D, and E municipalities that already have basic systems, allowing them to provide property tax and business licenses online Department of Agriculture and Development Academy of the Philippines’ project which will allow farmers to have access to valuable agriculture information and eventually use them for trading goods through the internet Department of Health project, with the cooperation of the Philippine General Hospital to provide tele-health capabilities – skills of PGH specialists – accessed by patients and doctors in rural communities public safety information network for the Department of Interior and Local Government an e-library system which will connect and digitize all of the national libraries of the country including the National Library, the University of the Philippines Library, and other libraries in the country

The second element that CICT is focusing on, in partnership with the private sector, is the establishment of more network facilities or digital infrastructure to provide more access points to the internet. Obviously, this is a bigger challenge because the country’s ability to establish these networks depends on private sector initiatives. On the other hand, business is business. Deciding whether to put up these networks or not depends on the market. Is there enough market to put up broadband capabilities in particular locations? “Hopefully, with our e-government strategy, we can provide more applications, the demand for internet access will also grow, and therefore justify the establishment of broadband facilities,” Peña says.

The third focus is on e-services or ICT services. Here, the CICT is working jointly with sectors like call centers and business process outsourcing, animation, and transcription services.

“Some of the critical projects that will fall under the category of delivery of critical frontline services of government will include an integrated Philippine business registry system. This will provide businesses wanting to set up in the country with a one-stop processing center. The project will try to link together about five agencies involved in granting business licenses like the Department of Trade and Industry, Board of Investments, Securities and Exchange Commission, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Social Security System, and eventually, even local government systems. Another project involves the harmonization of numbering systems of multiple government agencies. Right now, each agency has different numbering systems such that we have a different social security number, a different tax identification number, a different number for birth certificate. The idea is to harmonize all of these numbers so a person can be identifiable by just a single number. It is a critical component of integrating systems in government into the e-government strategy.”

Infrastructure and Systems

Secretary Peña explains that the Commission is preparing for the creation of a Department of ICT. Measures creating the new agency have already been filed in Congress. Congressman Simeon Kintanar filed House Bill 3218 while Senator Ramon Magsaysay, Jr. filed the Senate version. Hopefully, the bill will be enacted by mid-2005 or by the end of Congress’ first session. Peña says, “I think the road has been paved for the Commission so by the time the Department is created by next year, it’s just a matter of changing the name from Commission to Department.”

Peña believes that the country has fallen behind in implementing its e-government strategy and that another year’s delay will not be acceptable. The effort would involve close coordination and collaboration across government agencies and it might take five to 15 years for the country’s overall ICT strategy to be fulfilled. Under present conditions of 3% internet usage or penetration rate, Peña says the current situation is a long way from achieving the CICT’s goal of providing affordable access to all communities to technology, which in the current context is affordable access to the internet. He believes it is a vision that the government should have its sights set on so it can be achieved over a shorter period of time.

Connecting people into the system that the CICT is developing depends on two major factors. One is broadband network that could be made available to communities. The next challenge is affordability of the service. “To access the service, you have to have a computer. This is why we also have the community e-center program to provide public access points to as many communities as we can afford,” Peña says. This allows more access to the internet and eventually access to government service. Although 30% of the population already has access to the mobile phone services, the penetration of internet access is very low, below 10%. The problem? Affordability of access.

“Hopefully, with a significant application of e-government, we will be able to increase internet utilization and hopefully grow the 3% penetration rate to the 30% penetration that we have now in cellphone technology. Thirty percent of our citizens have access to cellphones because they have SMS as an application. What we need to do is to develop e-government so that e-government becomes the SMS of the internet,” Peña says.

“Clearly, when you talk about accessibility, you have to take it down to the level of the barangays. However, it would be hard to bring it down to that level in such a short period of time. Still, the CICT is targeting all municipalities to have broadband capability in the next five years. Of course, barangays that are more advanced in terms of capability and have more businesses in their area will already be added to that target for connectivity. This is the first leg of the ICT roadmap – to provide local and national government broadband services. The second leg is the e-learning or the connectivity of public high schools. As declared by the President in her 10-point agenda, she wants all public high schools to at least have computer laboratories. The CICT will make sure that these computer laboratories have connectivity to the internet because this adds value to computers”

The third leg of the roadmap is the development of regional ICT hubs because right now they are confined to Metro Manila and Metro Cebu. In coordination with DTI, other ICT centers will be developed in other parts of the country including Dumaguete, Naga, Baguio, Leyte, Iloilo and Davao. This fulfills another objective which is to generate high value jobs. Moreover, this will enhance communication facilities in these regional hubs, because if call centers and BPO centers set up in those areas, the carriers will obviously provide the network requirements or the broadband capabilities for their operations.

One Million Jobs

“The bigger challenge now is not really the demand for skills but the supply of skills. That is why the CICT strategy has to be very closely linked with the country’s educational system which has to cope with the skills required by this sector. Unless we are able to do that, we cannot take advantage of those jobs. The present take-up rate of less than 5% for the call center industry is very disturbing because if that continues, then there would not be enough graduates to fill-up more seats in the future. We are only producing around 400,000 graduates a year and 3% of that (12,000) is clearly not enough to supply all of the demand for call center seats. So the quality of graduates has to be upgraded, particularly in English, so the take-up rate can be increased to 10% or 20%.”

There is a need to complement any kind of investment in technology with a major push towards human resource development. If the country wants to be a major outsourcing location of the world in terms of IT services, it needs to develop and build the manpower skills needed for this sector. While ICT will always be a private sector-driven industry, the role of government will be to provide a healthy and competitive business environment through policy and legislative reforms. Investments have to be brought in to provide the fuel to this engine.

“Citizen-centric” Systems

The biggest issue that has to be tackled, among other issues, is to build ICT awareness among the populace. Millions of PCs can be deployed across the country but if awareness is too low on what technology can bring to the public, the investment would have gone to waste. “Our e-government strategy talks about delivery of local government services, these are: property tax payments, business licenses, birth certificates, driver’s license, social security, health services -- a focus on citizen-centric applications,” he says.

Peña shares that right now, the architecture for information systems is based on integrated systems or customer focused applications. He explains this is based on horizontal functional processes rather than vertical processes. This is also networked with both customers and business partners in the context of a government system, just like a major agency to an ERP (Enterprise Requirements Planning, programs that help plan optimal production, order raw materials, etc.) and the citizens that are serviced as the CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

After all, Peña says, the life cycle of any Filipino deals with government and this is a birth to death relationship. “If we could link up all of the relationship of the citizen to government, then it fulfills the goal of setting-up a customer-driven or citizen-driven applications systems. We have to consider our citizen as our customer -- customer for birth certificates, residence certificates, income tax filing, property tax payments, SSS, GSIS loans, passport issuance from the Department of Foreign Affairs, police clearances, and driver’s licenses. So e-government systems need to be “citizen-centric,” he elaborates.

“One of the criteria that we have set for e-government funding is for the project to demonstrate that its applications provide service directly to the citizen and that it integrates with other government agencies providing service. I’m glad to hear that in the development of the Department of Foreign Affair’s electronic passport system, they are considering linking with other government agencies which provide the documentation needed to get a passport -- the National Bureau of Investigation for security clearance and the National Statistics Office for birth certificate. This is the kind of integration that we should go for in trying to achieve a truly citizen-centric and integrated system,” Peña expounds.

Road Ahead

The CICT Chair says it all boils down to government providing services to citizens directly. He underscores a provision in the E-commerce law which states that all government agencies should be able to deliver services electronically in two year’s time – in 2002. That year, government reviewed its performance based on a five-stage score of the United Nations’ measurement of e-government. Officials found out that only 19% of national government agencies have reached Stage 3 – which means that they still had two stages to go to really fulfill the mandate of the law. Eighty-one percent of agencies were in either Stage 1 or Stage 2.

Indeed, government has a long way to go in just fulfilling the mandate of the law. There is an urgent need to put together strategies so that the pace of what had been done in the past four years in terms of implementing the e-government law can be accelerated.

ICT is unique to each and every business and citizen. It is through greater understanding and adoption of ICT that the country will achieve its goals, embedding ICT at the very core of lives and businesses. During the lifetime of this strategy, through greater awareness, skills and harnessing the benefits of ICT, the Philippines will have a more flexible and engaged population and workforce.

As the country gears up to take its place in the global digital race, it is good to know that Secretary Peña’s capable hands are there charting the Philippine course towards ICT competitiveness.