The Digital Divide

The issue of the digital divide in the context of alleviating poverty was the central theme of the involvement of the Office of the Cebu Provincial Governor. From the time the summit was first presented to Governor Gwendolyn Garcia until the last Executive Committee Meeting of the Provincial Information and Communication Technology Council, the nagging question of how to leverage information and communication technology to alleviate poverty have permeated all interaction with her. It was the single prescription that Governor Garcia demanded from the Summit Working Group. The special group on the digital divide was formed and suggested by Bonifacio Belen, Executive Director of the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology or CEDFIT.

In a special focus group discussion just to discuss e-Centers and the issues of the digital divide in the island of Cebu, very interesting points were raised about community and enterprise development work of special interest groups. A special session in the 2nd Cebu ICT Summit was thus created just to give focus to this concern. A separate focus group was therefore required to give stakeholders a say in this issue. According to Frederick Amores of the National Computer Center, it was the first time ever that special interest groups were called specifically to discuss issues on the digital divide.

The focus group discussion was done at the IT Conference Room, May 16, 2006, Provincial Capitol attended by WorldCom, E-Development Initiatives (EDI), Central Visayas Information Sharing Network (CVISNet), and the National Computer Center (NCC).

It seems the current programs and intervention strategies are trying to do the following:

• Enhance education especially at the Basic Education level
• Introduce computer skills for employment opportunities
• Use computer knowledge to either help enterprises or build enterprises in the community
• Use technology to enable or boost local economies.

Existing programs have already been implemented to meet issues at the community level. Some of these issues and the program currently being implemented by different special interest groups are as follows:

Introducing technology into the rural barangays through Community e-Centers
The National Computer Center in Region 7 through the Central Visayas Information Sharing Network or CVISNet have set up many community e-centers across the Visayas and Mindanao. This could be a good model for implementing e-governance projects. It has proven to be sustainable but may need more logistical support to get the project deeper into the farthest barangays.

Development of Basic Education using the Internet and interactive multi-media technology
The Centre for International Education has developed a basic education curriculum and an e-learning system that will put our rural school children at par with the best elementary curriculum in the United Kingdom and the US. The model has already a proven curriculum and a good business model for sustainability. The Provincial Office of the Department of Education has also embarked even on limited resources to a technology immersion program for their teachers. They are currently implementing an e-learning system for the public school and a web-enabled administrative support system.

Providing training content for technical and technology education in the rural barangays
WorldCorp, Aboitiz Group Foundation, Microsoft, the Philippine Business for Social Progress, all non-government or not-for-profit organizations, have implemented successful programs for bringing technology into the rural areas via the elementary schools. If we come up with a more integrated approach to all these programs, we may be able to address the digital divide issue much earlier than the United Nations target of 2015. We no longer need to re-invent the wheel. We just need to agree to focus, to integrate, collaborate and stick to the same plan to get bigger results in less time.

Use computer knowledge to either help enterprises or build enterprises in the community
WorldCorp and E-Development are organizations currently using technology to either create enterprises at the barangay level or enable existing economies to conduct business beyond their immediate community. We have to understand how their programs work and help these organizations scale up their capacity to deliver their services at a much larger scale.

Use technology to enable or boost local economies
There are currently very serious efforts to develop products and services that will help organizations, communities, rural banks and cooperatives use technology to deliver value-added services or enable disadvantaged sectors like agriculture to have an equal playing field in the economy. A company called RuralNet is enabling rural banks to have the same ICT infrastructure as BancNet and Megalink at a fraction of the cost.

Develop or enhance the competence of Public School teachers to either teach or use ICT in communities
The Aboitiz Group Foundation, the Philippine Business for Social Progress, Microsoft Partners in Learning, the Centre for International Education, and Department of Education have all initiated development programs to enhance primary education. The next step is find a framework for integration, collaboration and large-scale delivery.

The existing programs indicate that there are already successful intervention strategies. The real issue is scalability. How do we implement such successful programs with really committed proponents throughout the whole island of Cebu?

Caesar Atienza, ICT Consultant to the Office of the Cebu Provincial Governor, commented during the discussion about the issue of scalability and the intricacies of program management can become the themes for further focus group discussions after the summit with the view of coming up with an operational plan.


(The synthesis and materials in the focus group discussions were prepared through the facilities of the Centre for International Education.)

Fourth Pillar: The Availability of Legal and Financial Frameworks

There's no doubt that government cannot extend assistance to the private sector without a mandate defined by law. Our ability to move within our innovation ecosystem and our economy is hinge on the environment that our national and local laws provide.

Tax and investment incentives even financial access is almost absolutely defined by our fiscal policies, investment and banking laws. The creation of our organizations and the ability of organizations to expand are encouraged or limited by our laws.

Our vision to expand beyond our shores to enter into global markets will force us not only to deal with our national laws but also the laws of the country we intend to trade with and intervening international laws and conventions.

We have to ask ourselves:

• What laws will help us take advantage of opportunities?
• What laws will enhance our capability to penetrate the global market?
• What laws will help build and nurture our innovation ecosystem, build the critical mass of professionals and practitioners, and create a generation of technology entrepreneurs?
• What laws or portions of such laws inhibit our Agenda?
• What laws do we need to pass or portions of the laws we need to amend to push our Cebu ICT Agenda or the National ICT Agenda?
• What mechanisms and programs will enable stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem to participate in the legislation process to frame pragmatic and relevant laws to further our ICT Agenda?

From the references, notes and discussions about the legal and financial frameworks, the following perceptions, understandings and assertions were discerned from the focus group:

Creation of a local ICT council
This council was suppose to be created after the first summit: One for every chartered or urbanized city, one for the province, and eventually one for the region. It has been partly accomplished by the creation of the Provincial Information and Communication Technology Council through Executive Order No. 06, Series of 2006, issued by the Her Excellency the Gwendolyn Garcia, Provincial Governor of Cebu.

Creation of a working group or organization to review, introduce amendments or introduce laws to make higher and basic education responsive to economic development goals of Cebu
The lack of flexibility in managing the curriculum of higher education and responding to changing global changes, have put our higher education institutions at a disadvantage against its foreign counterparts. Unless we do something to the CHEd charter its executives cannot initiate a more dynamic higher education for our country. At the moment, most technical working groups on higher education are really immersed in doing a work around on the limitations of CHEd's charter and its internal policies. It is time that a more focus group of committed stakeholders sit down with CHEd and work on a long-term solution to these issues.

Creation of a technical group to review, introduce amendments or introduce laws to encourage the growth of the Capital and Financial Markets
All of our policies and incentives programs are really built on the manufacturing model. There is currently no prevailing law or policy that specifically identifies ICT as a sector in an incentives program. There is a confused perspective that Board of Invesmtment incentive packages can be applied to e-services. This is born out of the belief that contact centers and business process outsourcing companies are taking advantage of the incentives under the Philippine Economic Zone program. These incentives are given to foreign direct investments. What we need are specific incentives that will level the playing field for local players entering the export of e-services or IT-services.

Creation of a technical group to review, introduce amendments or introduce laws to establish a Local Development Board
While the private sector will undoubtedly find a vehicle to put its agenda in high gear, government does not have a counterpart to this initiative. There must be a single body that directs the development direction of Cebu. This body must have clout and preferably managed by a representative from the private sector with relevant experience and deep involvement in enterprise development.

Creation of a technical group to review, introduce amendments or introduce laws to develop or formulate incentives to universities, institutions or organizations engaging in the development of the workforce or the human resources of Cebu
If academe is treated just like any service provider, it is just logical that it receives the same incentives as the private enterprise. There must be a group that can work not only with academe but also other service providers delivering competence or capability to discuss, plan and formulate a legislative instrument to help our lawmakers frame the laws properly. It is about time that stakeholders take a more proactive role in legislations that will eventually affect them.

Creating a vehicle to implement the programs and projects that will be born out of the strategic planning workshop of the summit
After all have been said and all perspectives are heard, the next major milestone is putting the plan into an operational machinery to reach milestones defined in the strategic plan. Are we going to let government take this plan and integrate it into one of many existing programs? Is it going to be with a business organization or chamber also among its many programs under the different committees? Or is it going to be another organization specifically focusing on getting the ICT Agenda done? The organizational vehicle will bind the commitments and build the framework under which many stakeholders will be working together. After that, will be finding and choosing the leader who will embody the Agenda and lead the organization to its defined goal and mission.


(The synthesis and materials in the focus group discussions were prepared through the facilities of the Centre for International Education.)

Third Pillar: The Provision of a Critical Mass of Quality Professionals and Practitioners

From the references, notes and discussions about the Critical Mass of Quality Professionals and Practitioners, the following perceptions, understandings and assertions were discerned from the focus group:

Development of a Pure Computer Science curriculum
The current curriculum for computer science is geared more towards making graduates employable. The outcome of the education is merely to comply with a set of minimum skills to make a graduate able to operate a computer system. To be able to drive innovation our Computer Science curriculum must evolve from a paradigm of producing graduates with employable skills to a paradigm of developing graduates with raw ideas for basic research, products or building on existing technologies. Currently our universities are not the seats of innovation.

Rationalization of University and Polytechnical education
Universities are supposed to be the environment for general knowledge, for intensive research and a ground for challenging society's conventions. Today our universities are producing caregivers, computer technicians, nurses, marine engineers that are more polytechnical than universal in content and practice. We have to rationalize our course offerings. There must be a way to delineate universal studies from polytechnical courses.

Organize Tracking and Documentation of the Local Human Resource
Since the first summit, the issue and need to track professional knowledge and technical skills have surfaced many times. A serious effort must be initiated to define what will be included in this list, how do we design this system, who will manage it, when do we start the design and infrastructure. Many owners of information and systems may have to sit down to talk about collaboration.

Capability Enhancement of Local Academe
CEDFIT have already started a lot of "firsts" in developing the capability of the academe. There must also be initiatives to develop the entrepreneurial skills of our technologists and build future entrepreneurs in ICT. Many professionals may have to be educated about ICT so they can participate in the growth of the sector. We need intellectual property lawyers specializing on information technology and accountants with appreciation of the business process of high-technology organizations.

Development Initiatives targeting Basic Education
Until recently, the initiatives of special interests groups have never come to the attention of the public. These initiatives have help Basic Education in the form of computer software and hardware, teacher's training, free online service subscriptions and a lot of other support that would have come at a very steep price. There's a need to study these initiatives in the context of scaling up its effectiveness and applications.

Development Initiatives targeting existing workforce and professionals
2010 in the context of the Cebu Strategy is important because this is India's turning point. India will be lifting many of its incentives for foreign direct investments (FDI). As early as now, global companies are already scouting for new sites for its India operations. 2010 is also our target for many of our economic milestones. It is the year that the Philippine government has set for the national ICT agenda. Cebu's challenge is to address our strategic milestones from now until 2010 and from 2010 to 2015. We must address the industry needs now. The business process outsourcing and contact centers are feeling the scarcity of manpower and so is the software development industry. Existing graduates are currently not at par with industry demands. The up take is still very low even with short-term intervention programs. There is something inherently wrong with our higher education curriculum and our basic education. We can no longer address one at the expense of the other.

Enhancement of the scalability of programs of organizations or institutions developing education, entrepreneurial skills or the general pool of the human resources in Cebu
Based on several focus group discussions about the digital divide, education and the enterprise development, there are already existing programs currently being managed by different special interest groups to address different aspects and levels of the issues. The question is: How do we scale up the program so we can implement it across the whole island? We need to integrate and then scale up the capacity of the programs.

Delivery of technology to the rural barangay and teaching communities to use technology to meet local issues
Current programs are already being managed successfully albeit slowly due to issues of logistics. If we can channel existing funding programs to be more focus and more integrated in its priority, we may be able to address the issue of logistics. There are already many corporate social responsibility programs that can fund these programs. All we need to do is convince organizations to re-align existing funding structures to support our prioritized programs.

Increase hard and soft investments in technology for education
We must help the Department of Education and the many special interest groups currently enhancing our basic education to scale up its capacity by investing in the technology. Existing community development programs of foundations and organizations should be aligned so that we can focus on programs identified by our strategic plan to be relevant to our agenda.

Development of professional services like Accounting, Legal, and other consulting services to support technology entrepreneurship
To help small and medium enterprise come up to the level of the global players, it must be able to adopt practices and acquire knowledge from many fields. Currently, very few lawyers and accountants have good understanding of the impact of the E-Commerce Law on business. In the late 1990s very few lawyers can draft a maintenance contract for systems integration, computer network maintenance or even datacenter management. Many textbooks in accounting did not have a template for the chart of accounts of high-technology organizations. Today, very few support services such as accounting and law announce specific specialty in intellectual property, venture capital or investment equity, and other services for technology-driven enterprises. An educational program for these professionals must be launched to create a pool of technology-savvy service professionals.


(The synthesis and materials in the focus group discussions were prepared through the facilities of the Centre for International Education.)

Initial Synthesis of the Online Focus Group Discussions

The online focus group discussion was started to get initial inputs for the summit and to gauge who among the invited stakeholders are willing to participate and contribute to the strategic planning workshop of the 2nd Cebu Information and Communications Technology Summit.

Inputs from live focus group discussions and phoned in feedback was also included in the synthesis because the topics are the same and certain participants have problem getting into the YahooGroups of their interest.

Certain articles or notes chosen or cited by the participants are also included in the synthesis.

Online Focus Group Discussion 1 - First Pillar - Innovation Ecosystem

From the references, notes and discussions about Innovation Ecosystem, the following perceptions, understandings and assertions were discerned from the focus group:

A Geographical Point of Convergence
The innovation ecosystem must be anchored on a specific point of geographical convergence of stakeholders or participants in the ecosystem. This means that there must be a specific area in Cebu that must be developed for this purpose. The direction of real estate development therefore has bearing on the emergence of this geographical point of convergence. We maybe looking the development of large (200+ hectares of land) self-contained communities having malls, commercial centers, banks, leisure areas, planned communities, law enforcement units, government centers, schools with international curriculum, resorts, conventions centers, ICT parks, research facilities, etc.

A Network of Business and Social Interaction
The geographical point of convergence must also be the point where a network of business and social interaction can take place. The location of eating and leisure places must be such that major players in the industry can switch from pure business meetings to more relax social functions without waste of momentum or large blocks of time. This means that travel time between certain sought after ambience must be less than an hour between two points. Certain enterprises or businesses must be able to cater to this need. A regular set of activities or events whether for business or for leisure must be designed to bring the stakeholders in ambience both entertaining and collegial.

Lifestyle Support Systems and Infrastructures
Support systems and infrastructure to support the lifestyle of major players or stakeholders must be developed and maintained. Lifestyle goes beyond good roads, clean water or good supply of energy. The people in this innovation ecosystem must be comfortable, must feel safe, must have choices where they can live or send their kids to school. Innovators need this lifestyle to think, to create, to establish alliances, to deliver the next innovation. We cannot wait for this lifestyle to evolve. We must create them. Build it so they will come.

Educational Institutions with Strong Business and Technology Research
There must be educational institutions or their satellite facilities for business and technology within the self-contained communities. These research programs must be designed to create or to innovate solutions in the form of products or services that solve common human, business and community issues or problems. These institutions should have curricula that must be able to get technology experts to establish a business or a business student to establish a technology enterprise and these enterprises must be able to compete globally. These entrepreneurs must be able to create technology, challenge conventions and "stir" the marketplace.

A Culture for Experimentation and Failure
Entrepreneurs especially startups may fail in their initial attempt in business or launching a product or service. There must be mechanisms to allow these individuals to close shop and start over.

Capital Formation and the Financial Markets
Financials institutions are conservative and may take many more years to be more open to risk. Venture capitalists are good but their focus are on big-ticket investments that practically rule out the entry of small but innovative entrepreneurs. If we cannot encourage big-ticket and conventional sources of finance to take risks we must encourage the growth of non-conventional sources.


Online Focus Group Discussion 2 - Second Pillar - Information Technology Entrepreneurship

From the references, notes and discussions about ITrepreneurship, the following perceptions, understandings and assertions were discerned from the focus group:

Models of Success and Leadership
We must have a way for documenting success stories of entrepreneurs who have competitive successfully in ICT. There are so many ways to do this. We can commission a study and the publication of a book. We can have compilation of business cases or case studies to be use in the local business or technology curricula. Advertising success stories.

Educational Programs for Entrepreneurs
Most of our business and technology programs in the academe are really geared towards creating a mass of employees. Our local paradigm must be the development of the next generation of entrepreneurs. Even if only one percent of each graduating class starts an enterprise every year, the wealth created by that generation will continue to grow in the years to come. Our shift must shift from generation of employees to creation of wealth.

Research for Developing Local IT Enterprises
The aim of research must be to improve the human condition. Our research programs must generate concepts or ideas that solve common human, business and community problems that inhibit wealth or opportunities creation. It must create products and services that business can sell so that it builds an economy.

Business Matching Programs
Although business-matching programs are an integral part of most chamber and trade associations there will always be room for improvements in terms of scale. We may need to consider partnering with global organizations for this purpose.

Offshore Marketing Capability
We have never considered the possibility of combining our resources to come up with a team or an organization that will do marketing for us on a global scale. Partnership with global organizations might just do the trick in this area.

Developing Ancillary Services
Aside from core products, we must be able to develop the capabilities of enterprises who provide ancillary or peripheral support to core products and services. For example, if we have financial institutions planning on selling financial portfolios to enterprises who would like to venture and sell online, we should help these financial institutions develop the capability to provide value-added services in e-commerce through technical support and incentives.

Capital Formation and the Financial Markets
Like always, scalability of operations and starting up an enterprise are still basic challenges that local entrepreneurs have to hurdle. An innovative capital market must be developed and nurtured. One possibility is to enhance the capability of savings and loans cooperatives or lending investor to invest in IT enterprise startups.

Honoring Investors and Contributors to Local Economy
Many companies and mostly global ones are already investing and expanding in Cebu. A program must be instituted probably by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Tourism (DOT) to honor investors, their representatives and officers in a festive ceremony to give them a very warm experience with Cebuanos.

Business Support Services
Business support services and the availability of more streamlined and shorter processing of business registration, permits and documentation will go along way in growing our base of micro-, small and medium enterprises. Serious efforts have already been done towards this end but more transparency and more technology should be put in place.

There's almost two more weeks to go and we have the summit.

Those who participated in the online focus group discussions will get a PDF version of the synthesis.