Digital Philippines

This issue’s cover story touches on a topic of increasing importance from both an economic and developmental point of view. For a number of years now, the country has been hard at work trying to put together a roadmap to a Digital Philippines. It is a work in progress. What started as the e-Commerce Promotion Council several years ago (under the Estrada Administration) has now evolved into the Commission on Information and Communications Technology.

The next logical step will be to raise this commission to a full Cabinet-rank department. For years now, we have espoused the creation of a Department of Information and Communications Technology. Such a department can be spun off from the existing Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC), an agency which has grown too large and unfocused to move quickly in the age of technology. Today’s DOTC policy and regulatory coverage runs the gamut from land transport (including jeepneys and buses) to ports and marine transport to aviation and to telecommunications.

It makes far more sense to carve up DOTC and pass the responsibilities over information technology and communications to a new DICT. Following that, what remains of DOTC should then be merged with the existing Department of Public Works and Highways so that the planning and implementation of all transport infrastructure can fall under a single agency. This should result in better and more efficient planning of infrastructure projects.

Such a realignment will also mean that the government need not add yet another Cabinet agency to the bureaucracy and all the attendant expenses. The entire move would entail the merger of two agencies (DOTC with DPWH) and the creation of a new one (DICT). Personnel can be shifted accordingly.

But time is of the essence. The march of technology is inexorably steady and fast. For the country to marshal its resources properly, it must move now. The House bill (HB 3218) which proposes the creation of the DICT is a step in the right direction. It is our hope that this can be created by mid-year in order that this new department may be included in the budget preparations for FY2006.

If not, we will lose yet another year and risk falling further behind.

In the meantime, for a preview of what’s on the new DICT’s mind, flip forward to page 14.

Guillermo M. Luz
Editori-in-Chief