By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
March 9, 2010
Failing to achieve a permanent entity status, the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) is now setting up policies that will guide the country’s next president to advance on ICT developments.
“What we really want to do in the remaining months is to put in place the policies that will guide the next administration,” said Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua, chairman of CICT, in an exclusive interview with Computerworld Philippines.
CICT is coming off from an advocacy loss in the Senate recently, with the death of the bills mandating the creation of the Department of ICT (DICT) and Cybercrime Law. And since it remained only a commission under the executive order of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the next president can easily do away with CICT. Arroyo’s term is scheduled to end on June 10, 2010.
Roxas-Chua said it’s up to the next administration if it wants to follow or not the policies CICT is now crafting.
“We want to leave these policies so that developments will continue. At least, we won’t have to worry about the longevity or permanent nature of CICT,” he explained, adding that historically, parts of CICT have been going in and out like its separation and reunion with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and Telecommunications Office (Telof).
Roxas-Chua said CICT’s focus remains consistent on the cyber services and business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, e-government (e-gov), capital development, and also infrastructure development.
However, he said CICT should come up with a new flow chart or new structure so as to fully indicate the other agencies that were brought under it like the NTC and Telof. As a commission, he shared it was “difficult for CICT to create a comprehensive ICT plan.”
Appointed by President Arroyo in 2007, Roxas-Chua said CICT has achieved a lot of its targets when it comes to projects implemented and advocacy for ICT based on awareness. However, a lot more developments could have taken place if CICT was a department.
“I think we could have done more if we had a stronger entity. One of the challenges we had was we didn’t have the infrastructure component until this year,” Roxas-Chua said. “NTC and Telof were only brought back to us in early 2009 and so we weren’t able to accomplish anything in the first year and a half.”
CICT is now reportedly trying to catch up with its universal broadband strategy and other issues being tackled by NTC.
Roxas-Chua said if only CICT was a department, “all ICT projects of government would have been cohesive — aligned with the central national ICT platform.”
Yet Roxas-Chua reported CICT is doing well when it comes to projects among schools and is now in the process of connecting many of them by providing broadband connectivity. It is now on the stage of procuring satellite connectivity for schools that have no available alternatives.
And on the e-government side, he said CICT is strengthening its e-government fund guideline by working with the Canadian government which is helping them revamp the guidelines, for the latter to become more efficient and hopefully translate to more successful IT projects in government.
Roxas-Chua added CICT will be rolling out the new batch of computer laboratory and will also promote the country as the “offshoring destination of choice.” The commission’s officers plan to go to Germany, Australia, Singapore and in the US soon to promote the Philippines.
“The industry grew to about 20% last year. So hopefully this year with the recession finally coming to an end, it will be back to a normal run rate of 25%,” Roxas-Chua said.
President Arroyo recently reported that revenues from the country’s BPO sector is expected to exceed US $9 billion this year compared to its record of US $7 billion revenues in 2009.
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