|
Citing
the big role of information and communications
technology in national development, Sen. Edgardo Angara
said he is supporting a bill calling for the
establishment of the Department of Information and
Communications Technology (DICT).
“ICT is
one of the frontier fields that will dominate the
world—how we work, study and conduct business. It would
be to our great disadvantage if we were left out in the
field of ICT,” said
Angara in a statement.
“Over
the last two decades,
China
and India have used ICT to drive their economy and lift
millions of their people out of pervasive poverty,”
Angara added.
During
the hearing of the Committee on Science and Technology,
Angara urged for the formation of a technical working
group that will assess the scope of the bill in terms of
coverage of agencies with ICT functions and approved
budgets.
Under
the proposed bill, the DICT will assume the
communications-related functions and jurisdictions of
the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC)
and will integrate the following agencies: Commission on
Information and Communications Technology currently
under the Office of the President, the National Computer
Center under the DOTC; the Telecommunications Office of
the DOTC and the Communications Planning Service
Division of the DOTC.
Angara,
the Senate chairman of the Committee of Science and
Technology, said it is important to form a super body
that would promote the utilization of ICT and
effectively coordinate and implement national and local
ICT services.
“For
instance, the Digital Village project which will enable
rural farmers to use the Internet to access information
on prices of goods, land records, weather forecasts,
local government database and other agricultural
knowledge support—thereby boosting their agriculture
productivity—has been dragging on for years. This is
largely due to the lack of coordination among agencies
with ICT functions,” he lamented.
Unlike
the Philippines, many countries such as Thailand and
Singapore have their own ministries dedicated to ICT.
Angara
cited Asian economic giants China and India, which have
effectively harnessed ICT to leapfrog into the forefront
of economic development. Through ICT, China in less than
two decades was able to develop 800 million subscribers
for phone handsets, a far cry from the less than 1
percent telephone coverage. Now, about half of all phone
handsets and more than two-thirds of all personal
computers in the world are produced there.
India
has set up 100,000 telecenters around the country of
600,000 villages, or one in every six villages. It made
a great breakthrough in bringing the benefits of
technology to rural areas by setting up digital villages
or Internet kiosks which farmers can use to access
market information, weather forecasts and government
database, in order to increase productivity.
In the
Philippines, access to simple ICT tools is limited, with
only 464 personal computers catering to more than 13
million public elementary school students, or a ratio of
1:26,000.
In high
schools, five million students share among themselves
45,221 computers, or a ratio of 1:111. |
