By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
January 22, 2010

A “ray” of hope still shines for the legislation of the pending cybercrime and Department of ICT (DICT) bills in the Senate, and it’s no other than Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, chairman of the Commission on ICT (CICT) – as he remains optimistic of the approvals, despite only six session days remaining for the legislative calendar.

Chua reported that while the DICT bill interpellation was postponed until Monday, the Cybercrime bill was finally introduced on Thursday. He vows to continue pushing for the approval of the bills until the last session day in the Senate.

The CICT chief is overwhelmed by the support coming from different ICT groups in the country and expects them to rally behind him again on Monday’s session. Groups present in the Senate last Thursday came from the leadership and members of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP) and the CIO Forum. CICT’s commissioners were also present to respond to interpellations.

“We hope more groups will continue to support us in the last six remaining session days.  Each bill will have to be approved on the 2nd and 3rd readings and reconciled with the House versions in a bicameral conference within that span of time,” Chua said.

Since Jan. 18, Chua vowed to attend until the last session day of the Senate and has been calling for public support especially through his Facebook account, where we would regularly post developments at the sessions.

Chua expressed fears that if the ICT bills don’t pass in the Senate, lawmakers would have to start from scratch in the next administration.

CICT’s existence is said to be “fragile” since it was only created through an executive order (EO) by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2001. The next president can easily remove it if it does not become a department.

Arroyo, in her last state of the nation (SONA) address last July, called for DICT’s creation in order to further improve the local BPO and tourism sectors in the Philippines. It is a development that has been clamored for almost eight years already.

Senator Edgardo Angara recently told Computerworld Philippines that the conversion of CICT into a government department is “a must” in order to have focus on the issue of policy direction of related government agencies such as the Department of Science and technology (DOST), Telecommunications Office (Telof), National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), and National Computer Center (NCC).

According to a recent study by research firm Ovum, the creation of a DICT in the Philippines could rally the local ICT economy around a maximum of four capability areas, they are medical and legal transcription, engineering, software-as-a-service (SaaS), including building businesses around open source technology.

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