Taking the magic keyboard to the future

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States who passed away in 1969, said the following words: "The only thing that I do properly with all my heart, I do not wish to do again. I have only known how to be a good general, and it is to peace henceforth that I want to dedicate all my time, all my labors." The good general said this upon announcing his decision to run for president of the United States.

Being here in the US for a medical checkup and vacation from the ugly heartbreaking doses of Philippine politics and accusations of corruption every single day of our lives in Manila, one expects to feel better, more at peace here. But then again, experiencing 9/11’s first anniversary just last week in the States, one gets an overdose of how terrible the state of the world is right now and one begins to see with the greatest clarity that the road to peace is indeed extremely complex. In order to ensure homeland security, a state has to have the most effective and sophisticated weapons of destruction and warfare at the tip of its leader’s fingers.

It was after all, so early in the game when the first president of the United States, in his address to Congress on January 8, 1790, said, "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." And it was John F. Kennedy only a couple of decades ago who so eloquently said, "We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world – or to make it the last."

When my family and I arrived at the San Francisco airport a couple of weeks ago, people were talking about Saddam Hussein and the need to incapacitate him in order for this ghastly paranoia of the world be cured. My own doctor asked me how I felt about the possible bombing of Iraq. The Cold War has ended, yet ethnic hate and ethnic cleansing have become everyday phrases confronting us world citizens. My simple non-military mind just asks the question: If war is indeed an invention of the human mind, then shouldn’t the human mind be able to invent peace?

Just as the human mind has come up with some of the most outstanding and mind-boggling technological innovations of today, the extent of these inventions limited only by man’s imagination and genius, one begins to wonder if it is indeed the human brain that is the crowning glory of evolution.

And here in America everyone starts very, very early indeed. My five-year-old granddaughter Katya, a kindergarten student at San Francisco’s St Vincent de Paul school, upon being fetched by her mother and me just the other day, clapped her hands in glee and told us, "We had music and computers this afternoon. I love my magic keyboard!" (This apparently is the kindergarten terminology for the computer.) When we arrived home, Katya excitedly showed me her "Certificate of Achievement" in computer class which said she had mastered all the keys on her keyboard with excellence and had graduated into computer usage. Katya was definitely excited, bubbling and babbling about this present-day digital wonder out of her tiny mouth in order to make us feel good that she had learned a lot that day.

The world has taken and continues to take giant steps in the field of information and communications technology. The need for the Philippines to catch up with a great many of our neighbors in Asia and the other countries of the global telecommunity has become so acute.

Perhaps one major reason why a man named Virgilio L. Peña was appointed Undersecretary of Information and Communications Technology of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) last August 1 was the need for our country to grapple with being relevant in a global sector that is possibly the most meaningful today. Ver Peña’s educational and professional credentials are excellent...I do not think anyone in the country can match his experience, technical expertise and innate ability to perform well. He is still the executive director of the Information Technology & E-Commerce Council (ITECC) which is a government/private sector planning and advisory body chaired by the President, critically tasked with the development of information and communications technology and the promotion of e-commerce in the Philippines

We all know that Congress passed what is now known as the "E-Commerce Act of the Philippines" quite some time ago, yet hardly any progress in this regard has happened, or if something is indeed happening it is being undertaken in an unorganized manner – one can’t seem to be able to tell where it was supposed to start, what is the focal point, the necessary time-bound steps to be undertaken, the areas to be addressed and where the effort is really going.

It was nice of Ver Peña to invite me to lunch a few weeks ago after he was appointed, in order to exchange views. I had heard of him as former president of IBM Philippines till 1994 and as presidential assistant for information and communications technology in the Office of the President, but I was not prepared to meet such a genuinely nice, personable, knowledgeable and interesting man with a diffident, unassuming personality. I knew that Peña is no pushover – he’s been a line professional in the IT industry almost throughout his entire career; had been also president and managing director of San Miguel Brewing International in Hong Kong, hence, an old hand in the rough and tumble of management.

He is in fact a graduate of Electrical Engineering of the California State Polytechnic University and the Executive Program of Columbia University. When I was DOTC Usec for Communications, I had secretly wished I had instead acquired a degree in electrical engineering rather than the law degree that I had, although my law background helped me well in the department’s effort to demonopolize and liberalize such a complex and critical sector of the country as is telecommunications.

Over lunch as we talked, I knew that this guy is going to deliver the tasks mandated on him. He now has the vehicle and he has an excellent support staff – the inner circle of loyal DOTC workers led by Amy Reyes and Eugene Magboo in the office of the Usec for Communications, all capable and supportive. There is also an unsung group of extremely skilled technical professionals led by the chief of the Telecom Policy and Planning Division, Dr. Aurora Rubio, and the Management Information Systems (MIS) service led by its director, Emma Hizon. They are career officials and an exceptional resource to draw from, having had the advantage through these years of participating in the latest state-of-the-art technology seminars, training programs, and conferences in the telecom and IT world. Within this technical gold mine of professionals who just silently work at their jobs are professors who teach after office hours in order to earn an extra buck and more importantly for their professional growth; or work on their master’s and doctorate degrees...the Philips, the Rauls, the Rainiers of the TPPD (Telecom Policy and Planning Division). I call them the "unsung heroes" of the DOTC!

It is for this reason that I support very strongly the bill creating a new "Department of Information and Communications Technology" (DICT), which will house the entire telecommunications and IT crew. There is every reason to give this bill the great priority it requires, as there is every reason not to make it a mere "Authority" attached to the DOTC. House Bill 4240 creating the ITA (Information Technology Authority) proposes the creation instead of the ITA as a spinoff following its absorption of the Telecommunications Office (TELOF), which is a sectoral office within the DOTC, and the National Computer Center (NCC). ITA is supposed to put on the cloak of a corporate entity with business and commercial powers to transact businesses as any GOCC. I subscribe to the views, however, of a position paper of the DOTC that there is no "lucid" expression of ITA’s pivotal responsibility in ICT development, this aspect being the most critical, and for that matter, ITA’s relationship with the whole ICT sector. There lacks a clear policy statement of the mission, the role, and the functions ITA is expected to undertake in the ICT universe as they call it.

HB 4240 is contrary to the pronounced policy of letting the ICT sector be private sector-led, with the government, through a line department, the DICT, serving the role of policy maker, regulator, facilitator and consensus-builder. Should the ITA, a proposed government-owned and controlled corporation, be allowed to compete with the private sector? If the ITA is not intended to compete with the latter, why bother to bestow the cloak of corporate powers on it? If indeed the ITA is to compete in business, then why should it be given the inherent state powers to, among others, administer all laws, rules and regulations in the field of IT; establish and prescribe rules and regulations in connection with the establishment of IT facilities in underserved areas of the country, formulate and recommend national policies, and which could even be more at issue, exercise the power of eminent domain. I can just imagine what charges of conflict of interest will be tearing the ITA apart given the politician’s penchant for crying "foul," "illegal," "corrupt," "immoral" all the time!

I’d like to see a solid technical professional like Virgilio L. Peña, equipped with his excellent credentials and the invaluable professional experience he possesses, find his vehicle in a "DICT" that hopefully will be created within the soonest possible time by a Congress that knows that our beloved country, the Philippines, must, with the greatest urgency, grapple with her very own relevance in the global telecommunity and the information sector of the world.

For all you know, with Ver Peña leading this great effort, Katya and her "magic keyboard" will really have something to look forward to at home in the Philippines.