The First Cebu Information Technology Summit: Looking Back

The 2nd Cebu Information and Communications Technology Summit will be happening this May 24-26, 2006. Prior to this summit is a series of Online Focus Group Discussions. Some of those participating may have been a delegate in the first summit while others may not have an idea or recollection of what the first summit was all about.

As the Summit Workshop Manager I believe that everybody must understand what we are doing now by looking back to March 2001.


Brief Background
The Cebu Information Technology Summit or Cebu IT Summit was an offshoot of Cebu’s desire to find a niche in a country suffering from several economic setbacks in the past years.

As per the National Economic Development Authority or NEDA profile of Cebu, it has an ideal set of resources to take the initiative. It has enough telecommunications, sea/air transport facilities, human resources and other resources to sustain its growth.

The Office of the Mayor of Cebu City and the Cebu Investment Promotion of Cebu commissioned Team Asia, an event organizer and marketing consulting firm, to conceptualize, plan and implement an IT summit to get the stakeholders together to set a vision and plan a strategic course of action to define Cebu as an IT Hub of the country if not of Asia.


Information Technology Workgroups
In preparation for the summit, working groups were formed from different sectors to define the content and scope of the summit. A series of meetings and smaller workshops were conducted to define general areas of concern to be covered in the summit.

These work groups were formed by the Steering Committee of the Cebu IT Summit headed by Caesar Atienza of the Cebu Investment Promotion Center.

It was decided that several pre-summit workshops should be conducted under each area of concern to determine what major issues will be taken up in the summit itself.

Eventually it was decided that all workshops be held simultaneously or done in a series of several days. Team Asia played a key role in putting the machinery in action for the pre-summit and actual IT summit.

Team Asia is not a member of the Steering Committee.Team Asia was commissioned to complete the final phase of the pre-summit preparation by managing the three-day Pre-Summit Workshop.


Pre-summit Workshops
The pre-summit workshop was done in February 26, 27 and 28, 2001, at Toledo & Danao Rooms of Holiday Plaza Hotel, F. Ramos Street, Cebu City, Philippines.

The Pre-Summit Workshop is a preparatory activity for the Cebu Information Technology Summit. The three-day activity covered Human Resource, Infrastructure, and Policy & Incentives.

Team Asia group for Cebu City headed by Ms. Doris Mongaya managed the pre-summit workshop process for Cebu Investment & Promotions Center. The Information Technology SummitThe Cebu IT Summit was held at the Ballroom of the Cebu City Marriott Hotel on March 29 & 30, 2001.

The Summit’s objectives are as follows:

• To take stock of the state of the IT sector in Cebu vis-a-vis the rest of the country and the world.
• To agree on a common vision and program of action that will enhance the position of Cebu as a preferred investment destination for IT and IT-related industries.
• To agree on a mechanism that will advance the program of action for enhancing the position of Cebu as a preferred investment destination for IT industries.

Vision
To establish Cebu as an IT Hub in the Country and In Asia by making or establishing:

• Cebu as the most IT investment-friendly island in the country.
• Cebu as the central IT knowledge and competence center in the country.
• A robust local economy with small and medium scale enterprises providing primary and intermediate knowledge-based products and services to local and foreign customers.
• Cebu with the most electronically interconnected local government community and web-enabled public sector in the country.
• Cebu with a strong base of IT practitioners and professionals in terms of both quality and quantity to support intermediate and value-added products, services and processes.

Program of Action

1. Institute mechanism to gather and monitor baseline data covering existing student population, graduates, deployment, indices of career and current job opportunities related to the different niches in the IT sector.


2. Undertake joint research among academe, government and industry to establish local and worldwide trends in the use and deployment of IT to be able to identify opportunities; design, plan and implement programs; lobby in support of and participate in legislation to draft a new law or amend an existing one, initiate representation to strengthen or support existing policies and legislation, improve inter-agency cooperation and coordination.


3. Institute standards, protocols, indices to benchmark the quality and quantity of both programs and graduates focusing on training/educational program design, trainor/instructor's training design, identification of employable skills, level/quality of competence, joint academe-industry programs, and accreditation criteria for training programs/organizations.


4. Establish a critical mass of IT professional and practitioners by encouraging the formal academic institution, business organizations and commercial training organizations to contribute a proportionate share of graduates or trainees year after year through scholarships, undergraduate, graduate, bridging and on-the-job training/apprenticeship programs.


5. Local government must shift from being a passive player to being a proactive user of the technology and a customer for small and medium IT enterprises by instituting policies that outsource projects to local enterprises, encourage the design and implementation of web-enabled services, and support interconnection of offices and other local government units through the Internet.


6. Continue successful programs that encourage the use and deployment of IT, and design mechanisms to institutionalize and make it more pervasive to the greater portion of Cebu's society.


7. Establish institutional support for the IT Agenda by creating an IT Center, an Information Clearing House and a One Stop Business Processing Center to help in the conceptualization, design, plan and implementation of mechanisms to operationalize all of the above proposed program of action.


8. Power utilities must continue to work on improving the quality of power and find better approaches to managing power distribution.

On the last day, the Vision and Program of Action was announced by then Honorable Mayor Alvin B. Garcia, Mayor of Cebu City.

(The above notes were derived from the original transcripts of the workshops during the Cebu IT Summit. I was the Lead Facilitator managing all the workshop processes.)