Globe steps into gov’t ICT domain with eGov

MANILA, Philippines - Is it a surprise that, despite all our woes and bickering on quality and coverage of networks, the Philippines managed to rank 22nd out of 148 respondent nations in terms of social networks usage?

This bit of trivia published by the World Economic Forum and presented by Department of Trade and Industry Undersecretary Nora Terrado at the recent annual National Information and Communications Technology (NICT) Summit drew chuckles from industry players and national officials who came together to talk shop and envision how we get from here to there in terms of ICT.

As things stand, from the encouraging ranking, things go down a slippery slope. Terrado reported that the Philippines ranks 144th in the number of procedures to start a business, and 122nd in the number of days to enforce a contract. Seemingly defying our appetite and penchant to go on social media, we also have a miserable mobile broadcast subscription figure of 108 per 100,000 people.

And even as we have improved upon our standing in the NRI or Networked Readiness Index (from 86th in 2013 to 78th in 2014), which measures the ability of countries to take advantage of ICT opportunities, Filipinos cannot rest on our laurels just yet — especially in the face of the imminent ASEAN economic integration next year. The trade arrangement entails the “free movement of goods, services, investment, skilled labor,” along with “freer capital flow” among the member states. This promises to be a mixed blessing for the signatories because while it opens the door for progress, it is expected to expose weaknesses as well.

Current NRI rankings stand thus for the member states: Singapore (2nd only to Finland), Malaysia (30th), Brunei Darussalam (45th), Indonesia (64th), Thailand (67th), Vietnam (84th), Cambodia (108th), Lao PDR (109th), and Myanmar (146th).

Meanwhile, Chief Information Officers Forum (CIOF) president Lilia Guillermo, in a statement, expressed hope that ICT would be realized “as an enabling tool in attaining government transformation through good governance, transparency, and accountability.”

The idea, of course, is neither novel nor new. With various degrees of success, national and local governments have been trying to stay up to speed in a digital domain. Of course, the perennial lack of public funds has kept us laggards in the ICT arms race.

In a separate press conference, Globe Telecom senior vice president and eGov team head Jesus Romero talked in greater detail about the firm’s eGov effort — which seeks to utilize “ICT and other Web-based telecommunication technologies to improve and enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery in the public sector.

He had earlier rued at the NICT forum the challenges of ICT in the country — weighed down by legacy systems, insufficient skills, lack of interoperable systems, scattered and unsecured networks, and the absence of standard applications.

Romero said Globe last year earnestly started on an IT business geared toward enterprises. The type of services peddled was along the lines of data center hosting, cloud solutions, and end-to-end applications. Nine months ago, the firm ventured into something it had never gotten into: IT projects for government.

“Globe never did (it) before. A lot of people were afraid to deal with government in the past,” Romero revealed. Requirements for IT are also traditionally daunting: end-to-end — from application, platform, operations, to even consulting and help desk service. Add to this the fact that many best practices and platforms are not available locally. Local bidders thus need a reliable joint-venture partner to fill the need.

Romero insisted that a confluence of favorable circumstances has made Globe take a leap of faith into the domain. “This government is probably the most transparent we have seen in years; they have a good master plan, and the agencies we work with are competent enough,” he declared, adding, “IT projects are a two-way street” in that the customer cannot be weak or else the whole thing will fail.

Globe’s eGov is different from its public sector team, explained Romero. “We provide service to multiple constituencies — government to business to consumer. It has to span the whole range of society. It also must support multiple business processes, and the objective of increasing national competitiveness.”

The company is thus now pursuing its vision of being a key pillar in nation building through ICT. For starters, in February, Globe (in a joint venture with Canadian firm FreeBalance) won a bid to modernize the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement Service, which Romero described as “one of the most important projects of government.” The service is geared toward efficiently servicing the needs of agencies that buy goods for the best possible price. It also opens the door for qualified suppliers to sell to government — and virtually eliminating under-the-table dealings.

When asked by The STAR about the business unit’s goal, Romero replied: “The target is 50-plus-one percent. We don’t go after every project… when this team was formed, our CEO Ernest Cu had a very simple mandate for us. He said ‘you are not here to win bids. You are here to deliver successful projects.’ There will be companies whose objective is to win the bid, and then determine how to figure it out later.  In our case, winning a bid is just a step along the way. So when we put something together, we must know for a fact that this will be a successful project.”

He underscored that eGov does not want to be another cautionary tale of failed IT projects who won bids. “There’s a simple reason,” Romero said. “It’s our money, it’s your money. It’s taxpayers’ money.”

Surely, in a time of onerous acronyms such as DAP and PDAF, eGov is a hopeful step in the right direction, particularly with the region’s economic integration on the horizon.