CICT head bats for retention of EO-created commission

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) has urged the new administration to retain the commission and work on the accomplishments achieved under the Arroyo administration.

CICT chairman Ray Anthony Roxas Chua, in a briefing held at Malacañang, noted that the unprecedented developments in the ICT sector were seen during the Arroyo administration, including being named the offshoring destination of the year by an organization in the United Kingdom and the social networking capital of the world.

Chua said that a majority of the employees of the CICT would still be around after June 30 and he expects the projects of the commission to continue unless the Aquino administration decides to abolish the commission.

Considering that the CICT was created through an executive order only, Chua lamented that it would be very easy for the next President to abolish the body. “We hope that they would not do something that drastic,” he said.

Chua expressed hope that Congress would pass the proposed bill creating a Department of ICT that would centralize the policies and programs on ICT instead of having different departments working on these.

“This is an area where we try to put a lot of our efforts on but are just not sufficiently equipped to do so. We are really falling behind in terms of the global trends. The global trend is convergence,” Chua said.

“That is a global trend, more and more countries are pushing such departments and ministries and in ASEAN, only four countries are left without one — Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and the Philippines,” he added.

Chua noted that the developments in the ICT sector started with the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the early 1990s and continued under the Arroyo administration.

He said that the private and public sector partnership has done a lot in the development of the sector.

Apart from lowering the cost of various services for the consumers, the partnership has led to more investments from the private sector and in effect, brought down the expenses of the government.

The recognition of the Philippines as among the leaders in the business process outsourcing sector and social networking activity also says a lot about the development of the ICT sector in the country.

“Metro Manila has been named as one of the top offshoring destinations of the world and now we are widely seen as number two in the world behind India,” Chua said.

In the case of social networking, Chua noted that the high number of users of sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Friendster in the country reflects the strong interest of Filipinos in technology.

“For us, our responsibility is to make it accessible to them. We’ve already seen the growth in our Internet users, it’s grown a lot,” Chua said, noting that around 24 million Filipinos now have access to the Internet.

“But 24 million also means 60 million do not have access. So that is what we’re trying to do. We want to see a Philippines where every Filipino has access to the necessary technologies so they can uplift themselves, not just for entertainment purposes but for livelihood purposes and for knowledge purposes,” he added.