Why saving the CICT matters

By Robin Hicks | 11 February 2010 | Permanent link | 1 comment

Ray Roxas-Chua, the Chairman of the Philippines’ Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT), has just spent a week and a half lobbying congressmen for a bill that would upgrade his agency into a fully fledged department with a mission – and real power - to make government more efficient, transparent and accountable.

But his words, and those of officials from the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), fell on death ears as the Senate became bogged down with the saga of an election hopeful who is alleged to have “interfered” with a P6.22 billion (US$133 million) road extension project.

Now the CICT, which was only ever intended as a temporary platform upon which a bone fide department would be built, is in real danger of being scrapped altogether by the incoming government. None of the contenders to succeed Gloria Arroyo’s administration have made much noise (or any noise at all) about the transformative power of IT in their election pledges.

Another irony is that if it wasn’t for the CICT, the people who corruption hits the hardest, the disadvantaged, would be worse off now than they were when the Commission was formed in 2004.

Digital inclusion is not easy on an archipelago of 4000 inhabited islands. With limited funds, the CICT has set up community e-centers to provide affordable access to the internet, email, fax, voice over IP and distance learning, and it was no surprise to see the CICT’s iSchools project fight off stiff competition to win the Digital Inclusion award at the Government Technology Awards (now known as the FutureGov Awards) in Bali in October last year.

But now other projects, such as the five-year plan to create one million jobs within the ICT sector, and the development of the Philippine Cyberservices Corridor, a 600-mile strip housing 75,000 call centres and business process outsourcing companies, look vulnerable if the next administration does not recognise ICT is a strategic priority for government.

The Philippines fared poorly in the recent United Nations E-Government rankings, dropping 12 places on the last survey in 2008, while the Southeast Asian countries below it in the table (Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos) either improved or fared less badly. If the CICT is disbanded, it is probable that the Philippines, which like India harbours ambitions of becoming a world leader in IT outsourcing, will have slumped further by the next UN ranking in 2012.

The Philippines performed better than average for Asia in the UN table for online services, e-government development and human capital. But it lags the region on infrastructure and ‘e-participation’, the extent to which citizens have access to, and use, e-services. Internet penetration has grown rapidly over the past few years, but it is only expected to have reached 30 per cent by 2013, while broadband penetration will have grown to just five per cent.

The CICT’s work in partnering the private sector to open and improve the service quality of internet cafes (which are now pretty much everywhere, even outside of Metro Manila) needs to continue if the archipelago’s digital divide is to narrow and the CICT’s mission to “Empower the Filipino through ICT” be in any meaningful way fulfilled.

There is plenty of work for the CICT to do in government, too, which it can’t get done effectively while it remains a commission and not a fully fledged department with teeth. South Korea, Japan and Singapore have always done well in e-governments rankings, because IT in these countries is well supported from above. In the Philippines, the reverse is true. And this shows in government.

Most Filipino government officials use Gmail or Yahoo! email accounts in preference to their own systems, and the majority of systems and processes remain paper based. Efficiency, accountability and transparency will struggle to materialise unless automation is wholeheartedly embraced.

So much hangs on the general election in May. Not just who the winner is, and what their policies on ICT will be. But on the election itself, which – if all goes according to plan – will be the first automated poll in history. If the Precinct Count Optical Scan machines stand up to the scrutiny of political watchdogs, NGOs, IT analysts, voters and, lest we forget, politicians come election time in May, then ICT will have gone someway to prove itself to those who have failed to see (or rather chosen to ignore) the transformative power of ICT.

As the saying goes at Filipino elections, there are no losers, only winners and those who feel they have been cheated. Automation should give losing candidates less to complain about when the votes have been counted, and the winner can be satisfied in the knowledge that his or her victory has been fairly won.

Let’s hope that as the hysteria of victory subsides, the new administration sees ICT as a pathway to modernise a country that was, until not so long ago, a model for Asia’s government modernisers to follow.