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.)
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