New CICT chief vows to tackle tech reforms

THERE WERE other names — other than Atty. Ivan John E. Uy — that were considered to be the country’s next technology chief. Despite being an unpopular candidate, his eventual appointment has ruled out the possible abolishing of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT).

His appointment as the CICT chairman came only in late July, almost a month after President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III bared the names of many of his Cabinet members. Prior to this, there were reports that the new administration was considering junking the CICT that was created by his predecessor.

From his first round of interviews with the media, Mr. Aquino appeared undecided over what to do with the CICT — currently a transition agency — and the move to upgrade it to a department-level body.

Getting rid of the CICT, which is currently under the auspices of the Office of the President, would be less of a task for the new administration as it was formed only through an executive order in 2004. It was established pending the resolution over a bill creating the Department of Information and Communications Technology, a legislative exercise that has dragged on for almost a decade now.

Both an easy and hard decision

“It was hard but it was also easy [accepting the post]. That’s the paradox. It was hard because of the situation but also easy because I believe in the vision of the president, his sincerity and dedication to really push for good governance. I felt I needed to make my own sacrifices to pursue this dream,” Mr. Uy said in an interview.

A graduate of the University of the Philippines Law School, he considered his job as the chief information officer of the Supreme Court as his most challenging and rewarding job yet.

Despite financial constraints, he said he was able to introduce basic computing services to the court and later on implemented more complicated data computing like the e-library that uploaded court materials on the Internet.

He led trailblazing efforts in the court such as allowing the justices to use e-mail in 1994 and launching a Web site in 1996.

“It was not easy at the start. When I joined the court, the most sophisticated equipment there was an IBM typewriter in 1989. Eventually, we were able to implement changes,” Mr. Uy said.

He said he is determined to replicate his persistence and achievements in his present post despite the limited budget. CICT gets an annual budget of about P23 million where 80% goes to payroll.

Asked to comment on the controversial $329-million national broadband network (NBN) deal with China’s ZTE Corp., he said: “Let us see if it’s necessary despite the very negative connotation. Let us say if we are able to come up with an NBN type of network that can deliver exactly the same for, say, $20 million. Are we not going to do this?”

The NBN deal has its roots in the vision of linking government agencies nationwide through a broadband network which the CICT was espousing in its early years.

“The same thing applies to projects from the past administration. If these were good policies, why not [continue them]?” he added.

Mr. Uy said his agency, together with other agencies, would start to work on a five-year road map for the industry.

“We are formulating the ICT road map for 2011 to 2015 that will give the overall vision and direction that we need to undertake, including postal reform,” he said.

Pet projects

Postal reform is one of the many projects that he wants to see implemented during his term.

Technically, the Philippine Postal Corp. (Philpost) is under CICT as communications units of the Department of Transportation and Communications. CICT’s other units include the National Computer Center of the Department of Science and Technology and the Telecommunications Office.

At present, he said Philpost has a work force of about 17,000 employees and gets an annual budget of about P1 billion. He noted that it is about time that the government follows the model of other countries such as the US and Germany when it comes to public courier service.

“They have moved out of the traditional mail and gone to parcel because of e-commerce. Why don’t we do it also here? We should give Fedex and UPS a run for their money. Philpost has to be re-engineered and the postal workers re-trained,” Mr. Uy said.

The reform, he said, should also cover the Philippine Postal Bank, a unit under Philpost.

“This should be our ‘Western Union’ that would process the remittances of our overseas Filipino workers. Imagine how much income this can generate for the government,” he said.

In addition, Mr. Uy said he wants CICT to continue its efforts in pushing e-governance which aims to address issues such as red tape and corruption in the bureaucracy through IT projects that will result in the speedy delivery of government services.

“In today’s information age, the management of information is horizontal; it’s no longer vertical. We now need to cross the different agencies and departments to improve the efficiency of services,” he said.

CICT, Mr. Uy said, is now developing a unified platform for online payment for public services being offered by government agencies or the e-Bayad system.

In the area of business process outsourcing, Mr. Uy said CICT wants to take charge in addressing the issue of human capital development.

“We need to train our people to meet the knowledge and skills demand needed by the industry,” he said.

His proposal includes retraining the thousands of nursing graduates the country produces each year, most of whom are currently jobless.

Encouraging them to go into medical transcription, which is an outsourcing subsector, would address the supply and demand mismatch in the field of nursing, he said.

“The high demand for nurses [peaked] five, six years ago. When the world economy shifted, our educational system [did not] adjust [with it],” he said.  –MARICEL E. ESTAVILLO, Online Editor, Businessworld