World Bank

Last November World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim called President Aquino to inform him that the bank was offering an additional $480 million in additional financial assistance for community rebuilding and crucial infrastructure such as water, rural roads, schools and clinics. This followed the $500 million emergency loan announced earlier bringing the total package close to $1 billion. It behoves us to show the world that these funds are being put to good use.

Over the years, the World Bank has accumulated a store of knowledge of best practices in dealing with disasters. Dr. Kim recently provided in a Bloomberg column seven recommendations which could mitigate future disasters. Below is my take-away from his column:

1. The government and partners should provide an interactive IT system which will allow local officials to ask questions that help them quantify the damage a disaster might bring. For example, how many schools and students are affected?  In turn, the decision makers can better prepare for and respond to disaster risks.

2. Prevention could be as simple as the use of mega-phones to alert the population.  When Cyclone Phailin hit India, a new early warning system and a network of cyclone shelters saved 900,000 lives. There is also more sophisticated tech-nology as employed by Japan.

3. Government funding and policies must have clear-cut guidelines on risk-assessment that incorporate up-to-date models. The 2010 earthquake in Haiti killed 220,000 people.  On the other hand, in Chile which had greater earthquake intensity, only 500 died. The difference in Chile was up-to-date building codes.

4.  Information about dangers posed by natural disasters should be easily accessible to the public. World Bank Open Data for Resilience Initiative will make it easy to collect and share information and best practices.

5. Preserving the ecosystems save lives. Mangrove forests in northern Vietnam were developed at a cost of $1.1 million but it provided a buffer against floods and storm surges of Typhoon Wukong in 2000. Loss of lives and property was significantly reduced.

6.  There must be a focal agency for disaster management vested with effective authority to address cross cutting issues handled by various government agencies. Such was the case in Peru. The head of disaster risk management reports directly to the PM and works closely with the Minister of Finance.

7.  Lastly, reconstruction must aim to achieve better living conditions than before the disaster. In the case of Aceh, Indonesia, reconstruction brought about the political will to end the 30 year conflict.

In sum, Dr. Kim states: “Even as climate change increases risk of natural disaster, cities can be made increasingly safe, as long as public policymakers carefully prepare”

The recommendations were based on previous experience and policy makers should seriously consider their possible application here in the Philippines.  In my personal opinion items 1 and 4 should be adopted immediately if not already implemented.  Looking to the future, it would also be timely to search for best practices worldwide in disaster management which should be made available to the policymakers and to the citizenry.

I had written previously about the failings of the current structure of NDRRMC. Part of the mandate of this focal agency is to set up a data base of information gathered in the aftermath of Yolanda which could serve as future metrics for disaster prevention and response. Likewise, in the spirit of transparency and accountability, there should be an IT bulletin board which shows the progress of reconstruction efforts and where government funds have been utilized. The newspapers would be happy to publish this. The same could be employed by the private sector which has been commendably aggressive in their reconstruction programs. It may be worthwhile, assuming such a bulletin board is employed, to see who is more productive between government and the private sector.  The ideal individual to coordinate this effort could be former Senator Panfilo Lacson who is the “Rehabilitation cabinet officer” who has not been very visible lately…. perhaps because he is busy doing his job.

I browsed through 27 pages of Google on Yolanda and to my surprise all the news were November 2013 and one or two in January 2014. Surely, rehabilitation efforts are on-going and a regular progress report would assure both our people and foreign donors that work is apace. I hope this does not imply that after four months we have not yet progressed from the relief phase to the long term redevelopment stage. I have a nightmare that three years from now the affected areas will be like Haiti, still steeped in misery and poverty even worse than before Yolanda. History will remember how this administration performed in the management of this and other disasters. 

Cyber attacks

In 2013, the web pages of the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office and Istana were defaced. Later the websites of 13 schools were defaced.  Even the Singapore Museum of Art reported that data thieves had stolen 4,000 records of people from its database and illegally published the information on a New Zealand-based server.

We all know about the benefits of ICT but there is a dark side to it. It is common knowledge among the IT savvy that terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda employ computer experts.  Their expertise is being used to support their terrorist activities.  It was reported that the September 2011 Solo Church bombing in Indonesia was funded by hacking into a marketing website engaged in online investments. The thieves stole about 225 million rupiah (about $33,000).

Estonia, known for being Internet savvy in the European Union, was besieged by cyber attackers which almost crippled their operations. Allegedly, this attack was orchestrated by Russia. South Korea accuses North Korea for having launched 6000 cyber-attacks between 2010-2013.  The economic damage to South Korea was estimated last year in the magnitude of $1 billion.

Edward Snowden is the most famous of cyber experts. Some consider him a villain and others hold him in high regard. But the US is very concerned about his presence in Russia.  Clearly, he can be utilized to destroy the total cyber security system of the Americans. Many opine he has already done so.

Last year, we saw at least 30 government websites paralyzed due to cyber-attacks by Anonymous Philippines in conjunction with the anti-pork barrel protests. In 2012, a small-scale ‘cyberwar’ erupted between Philippines and China following the heightened tension in the South China Sea territorial dispute.

According to Jeff Buhl of Arbor Network, at least 33% cyber-attacks in 2013 were for political or ideological reasons.  Cyber-attacks on online gaming accounted for 31% and vandalism at 27% in the same period.  He notes that these figures are very different from 2011 when cyber-attacks were predominantly financially-motivated.

The managing director of Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), Ms. Jacqueline Poh was quoted as saying: “There is a saying that there are only two groups of organizations-those that have been breached and are aware of it and those that have been breached but have not been aware of it. IDA has a S$23 million budget to roll out programs under the National Cyber Security Masterplan 2018.”

I regret that there is no equivalent to IDA in our country which would have been comparable to our much desired Department of Information Communication Technology. The reason for not having a DICT sounds a bit “wishy-washy”. As I have often said: Technology denied is development delayed whether it be in mitigating natural disasters or countering cyber theft and terrorism. Unless you are a Luddite that is – of which I can be forgiven for entertaining the thought that there may be remnants of the sort extant in our government.