Philippine economy buffering fast as digital revolution takes hold  

In my lifetime we have moved from a mechanical, analog world to a digitised and all-encompassing cybersphere. The swipe of a screen has replaced the twist of a knob. And the size of everything has shrunk – except TV sets that are approaching cinema proportions.
The world is changing so swiftly that the new gadget you bought six months ago is already out of date, a dinosaur overtaken by nimbler and more useful technology. DVDs, introduced a mere 21 years ago, have long since fallen to USBs, which are now fast disappearing under the cloud. Looming on the horizon is nanotechnology with its bazillion-strong army of atom-sized components.
The scale of change rivals the Industrial Revolution and outpaces it for speed. As such Filipinos should be thankful to fromer president Benigno Aquino for signing the DICT into law and offering the country a means to harness this unprecedented technological surge.  
DICT chief Rudy Salalima has held senior positions in the tech industry for the past 40 years and now spearheads a team of IT experts tasked with rebooting the Philippine economy for the digital era.

Country-wide broadband
The DICT’s role is twofold: to assist the private sector to develop and place online a holistic system that encompasses all government services online in holistic and user-friendly system. Progress over the first five months has been impressive.
The goal is to computerise all services through a “national government portal” that will be a one-stop gateway to whatever you need from the government – with a maximum of three steps in two days.
A common platform has been established as a repository of data and information that government agencies can access, share and use to enhance their operations, efficiency and services.
Nationwide broadband is also planned, though the implementation method is yet to be decided. The DICT chief reports that the government is exploring the possibility of a public-private partnership to get broadband up and running all across the Philippines.
Free public Wi-Fi is already available in 96 sites countrywide, with a target of 1,300 by yearend.
Then there’s what to do with the private sector.  One could well say: Leave it alone it’s doing so well, so why fiddle with it? While the global outsourcing industry is growing at 5-7 per cent every year, here it’s been 19 per cent since 2006, with some 1.2 million well-paying jobs created – 32 per cent of them in rural areas. Some $22 billion was generated last year; revenue from outsourcing is set to overtake remittances by overseas Filipinos as early as this year.
But the mushrooming of Philippine call centres and backroom operations (accounting, engineering, HR, etc) has been accompanied by another phenomenon. Programming, software and gaming development and legal transcription are opening a new sphere of possibilities for Filipinos. The government’s help is needed, in providing the necessary training for colleges to ensure that they can meet the new demands of business process outsourcing (BPO). The Department of Education wants a book for every child. It’s behind the times: what we need is a laptop for every child. That laptop can access hundreds of books.
The DICT will also help develop BPO hubs in other areas by building more ICT infrastructure and putting in place the systems and supports needed to move IT up the value chain by training the workforce with skills necessary to handle more complex services. Do this successfully and the Philippines has the potential to be a global IT leader.
The foundations are already being laid, but Salalima has a lot more to do. A major plank yet to be put down is moving the Philippine IT sector into the more sophisticated areas of software and hardware. This is where the world is heading, and we must aim to meet 
its demands and reap the rewards that this revolution is bringing.