IT in government

Information technology is now an essential part of life. From the individual who uses a smartphone or laptop to the company that relies on big databases and cloud computing, IT has made tasks easier to accomplish and goals faster to achieve. It has, in short, resulted in efficiency.

The same can be true for the government, especially in the way it deals with ordinary citizen. As it is, the way state agencies conduct many essential public services can best be described as antiquated. Ordinary citizens’ transactions with the government—particularly with local government units—are so time-consuming, aggravating, and prone to corruption because they have to deal with manual records to be printed on paper and face-to-face dealings with government employees.

Various studies show how IT has benefited individuals and the private sector in general. A solid example is the ordinary e-mail, the principal means of communication now among companies, employees, families and friends as well as between institutions and their clients. And e-mail, regarded as an inexpensive way of communication, is not the only available means today for private companies to reach out to their customers or for ordinary persons to interact with one another; there are now live chats, social media and video conferences using smartphones.

The private sector is pushing the creation of a Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) precisely to help the government and the country as a whole achieve efficiency through IT. Local and foreign business groups have pressed lawmakers to pass a long-overdue bill that would mandate the creation of the DICT to raise the priority of IT in the government. In a recent letter to Senate President Franklin Drilon and Sen. Ralph Recto, chair of the committee on science and technology, 11 business chambers pointed out that a DICT would put the Philippines at par with the rest of the world where 80 percent of all countries have separate departments, ministries or agencies for IT. In Asean alone, they noted, six countries—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam—have a Cabinet-level agency for IT.

The Philippines appears to be regressing in this field because its ranking in the United Nations E-government Development Index has dropped sharply since 2003 and is now rated 95 out of 193 economies. A 2014 rating of broadband speed also showed the Philippines at 3.6 megabit per second compared with Indonesia’s 4.1 mbps, Malaysia’s 5.5 mbps, Cambodia’s 5.7 mbps, Vietnam’s 13.1 mbps, Thailand’s 17.7 mbps and the United States’ 22.3 mbps.

We cannot agree more with the business groups’ contention that, as a country, the Philippines lacks adequate infrastructure and competition to support the newest smartphones and provide faster broadband at low prices.

“There is hardly a part of society and the economy that is not touched by IT, either directly or indirectly. ICT is cross-cutting and an enabling tool. It is as critical a form of infrastructure as electricity (Department of Energy), public works (Department of Public Works and Highways), transportation (Department of Transportation and Communications), and water, for which a new agency has been recommended,” the business groups argued in their letter.

As proposed, the DICT will have a mandate to advance the entire Philippines more rapidly into the modern and efficient world of communications using the Internet and computers. Since technology and innovation are the engines of growth, the business groups noted, a DICT could bridge the huge digital divide in the country.

If Filipinos can interact with the various public agencies through IT channels such as websites, e-mail and mobile applications, the government can make the delivery of its policies and programs more effective. Just imagine, for example, settling property taxes or even securing original copies of vital documents such as birth certificates from the comfort of one’s home. This is all possible if we have an IT blueprint to improve e-governance across the bureaucracy.

Many countries have proven that e-governance—basically the use of the Internet in the way things are done in the government—contributes to improved efficiency, transparency and even accountability in many public functions. But first, we need an agency to draft an overall plan and oversee its implementation. That’s how important a Department of Information and Communications Technology is.