Five Things We Learned this Sem

As the semester draws to a close, we thought it would be appropriate to post a blog entry on the things we learned from InfoTech class this semester:

1. ICT could possibly be the key to kicking poverty. Whether it’s because of outsourcing or off-shoring, or because ICT provides us with the capacity to reach the rest of the world and look for jobs world-wide, ICT has definitely provided jobs for our poor countrymen. In fact, there are actually more jobs available than qualified workers! If only our supply of workers can meet the demand of the global market, maybe we won’t be such a poor country anymore.

2. There is no escaping ICT. ICT is getting to be something like taxes… there’s just no escaping it. It has invaded different aspects of our lives, from government to love life (hey, there are people out there who depend on VOIP to call significant others long distance!)… whenever there’s a need to communicate, you can bet that some sort of ICT will be used.

3. Local is getting outdated really fast. The whole world has been made available to the Filipino. We no longer have to be confined to local ideas, local products, or even local languages. Of course, this also means that we are given the opportunity to educate the rest of the world on our beautiful country, countrymen, culture, and products. Communication, trade, even committing crime across the globe has become as easy as clicking a mouse, all because of ICT.

4. There is more to law than litigating. Mention the word “lawyer” and the first thing most people think of is a courtroom. But this class has shown us that there are other options for lawyers too tired/wary/chicken to face judges and the opposing counsel. This semester, we learned that policy-making is an option available to us future lawyers. It’s just as challenging, lucrative, and interesting as litigation J

5. Understanding principles is the key to policy-making. Whenever our professors would lecture on certain policies, they always made it a point to emphasize key principles. This provides students with a clearer understanding of WHY a policy is made the way that it is (most of the time). If only ALL our politicians understood that understanding is the key to well-made laws, maybe we won’t have so much trouble in the legislative department. Then again, if we didn’t have trouble, we wouldn’t need lawyers either…

Overall, this sem has definitely given us much food for thought. With all this newly learned information, we believe we have just proven that searching for knowledge and understanding of the world of ICT is definitely NOT as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack.

Government with a Capital E

Nowadays, the trend in governing a country is having an E-Government. As it can be deducted from its name, it is a system of governance wherein information and communication technologies (ICTs) are integrated into the government’s framework and functions. In E-Government, accessibility and delivery of government services to the people are aided and enhanced by ICTs (i.e. online access to these services). Ideally, having an E-Government will also improve communications between different government agencies, thus, improving the efficiency of making policy decisions and giving services to the people. It would also make citizens become more involved in running the country as transparency in the transactions of the government would become more possible because said dealings can be made readily accessible online to anyone. Also, citizens may be able to voice out their opinions regarding government policies, projects, and laws that are being proposed to be passed.

Has the Philippines joined the trend?

Well, it seems to be exerting an earnest effort to do so. Government agencies are now gradually computerizing their data, speeding up the processing of forms, licenses, documents, etc. For example, the former whole-day renewal of one’s driver’s license has now been cut down to just a matter of three hours tops. Some agencies have even gone as far as making it possible to accomplish the necessary forms online. There are also some that entertain queries through email (tried and tested: NSO would give a detailed reply an email question within three days). Some agencies also offer some of their services through SMS. Example, one’s PhilHealth number may be obtained by just sending an SMS to the PhilHealth textline (see http://www.pinoytechblog.com/archives/e-government-try-out-philhealth).

What should be improved on?

There are a lot of things to improve on but of primary importance is the training of people in the government to become proficient at least with basic ICT, and attaining system uniformity and interconnectivity between the agencies. Training government employees and officials in ICT is clearly essential. It would be impossible to have an efficient E-Government if only a handful of government can operate a computer.

As for system uniformity and interconnectivity between agencies, these are important because streamlining of government services will only be possible when these are attained. At the present state of things, wherein each agency is implementing their own ICT system, processing may have sped up in one agency but the completion of the actual needs of the citizen would still take days to accomplish since he has to go from one agency to another. For example in obtaining a visa, an online form may now be accomplished but the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) clearance and Birth Certificate requirements have still to be delivered personally. Thus, one would still have to go to at least two other agencies to complete his task. If the system of all agencies are only uniform and interconnected, days of processing may be replaced by just minutes of clicking and thinking by a government employee on desk duty.


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Links to helpful information about E-Government:

http://www.digitalphilippines.org/

last visited: September 19, 2006; 12:15 a.m.

http://ww.apdip.net/publications/iespprimers/eprimer-egov.pdf
last visited: September 19, 2006; 1:48 a.m.


Site featuring E-Government in different countries all over the world:

http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/wsis-themes/ict_stories/themes/e-government.html
last visited: September 19, 2006; 1:56 a.m.

Cashless Happiness

Before money came into being, our ancestors practiced bartering to get rice from the farmlands in exchange for fish from the seashore. While the practice may be ancient, it has never gone out of style... and each one of us has probably done it at one point or another. If you're a girl from our generation, you probably swapped a few pieces of scented stationary with your grade school classmate to get the sheet of fancy stickers from Stick 'Em Up.

The practice has continued to thrive throughout the years probably because it lets people get rid of something that is just occupying too much shelf space, in exchange for something they really really like. It works on the principle that another man's trash may be another man's gold.

These days, the internet has taken bartering to new heights. Now there is an almost unlimited pool of people with whom you can barter with. You can trade ANYTHING with just about ANYBODY! For example, Kyle MacDonald posted on his blog that he aimed to have a house in exchange for a red paper clip. Within one year, he managed to reach his goal, and in the middle of all of these transactions he managed to make a lot of people happy.

Others have put up bartering communities, wherein in exchange for certain products, they get virtual currency which they can use to barter with someone from the same community – something of a twist to the old method. It still works on cashless transactions, but it allows people to transact with others who may not want the product being offered but are willing to part with their own goods (and vice versa).

This system could bring about a lot of good, especially for poor folks who can't afford to buy whatever they need but do have things of value which they can trade. And remember that barter doesn't have to be done with THINGS all the time. If our local government units in far flung places can only get internet access, maybe it will be possible to barter for things available online in exchange for local products. Think of hand-woven cloth from Antique in exchange for online courses in Math, English, and Science especially designed for the children of that particular town. Transactions like that are win-win situations, allowing us to showcase Filipino products while developing the community.

Of course, we're not saying everything about bartering is good. There have been illegal exchanges also, which are experiencing as much of a boom as licit bartering. But the bad things should not deter us from using a method that has the potential to help so many others. After all, if a man can get a house in exchange for a paperclip, Filipino goods which are products of great skill, ingenuity, and creativity could certainly fetch much much more.

Article on Kyle MacDonald:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/07/redpaperclip/index_01.htm?chan=smallbiz_smallbiz+index+page_after+work, last visited Sept. 11, 2006

Interesting Stuff on Barter
http://www.businessknowhow.com/money/barter.htm last visited Sept. 11, 2006
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/b/barter/index.html?query=COMPUTERS%20AND%20THE%20INTERNET&field=des&match=exact last visited September 11, 2006
http://www.internetworldstats.com/articles/art073.htm , last visited September 11, 2006
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14640271/site/newsweek/

PIRACY: in the not so high streets and buildings

It is common knowledge in the Philippines that the DVD pirate central is found in Quiapo. There, instead of just finding the usual array of sidewalk vendors with their makeshift stands and stacks of illicit wares, some “hot” stalls are situated in buildings devoted to the trade.

This “central” is not a secret to anyone. Knowledge on how to locate the exact place can easily be obtained by just asking anybody around. You can even locate it by simply looking into every building there since said central is operational the whole week and the whole day. If this pirate haven is that conspicuous, it makes you wonder why said place still exists when the Optical Media Act, a law that supposedly punishes manufacturers and distributors of these illegal DVDs was enacted way back in 2004. Could it be possible that the enforcers of this law are not aware of this publicly known secret “hot” spot? But, to be fair, it must be very hard to put an end to DVD piracy when there are literally millions of patrons of said goods. Clearly, the Quiapo pirate central could not have existed this long and operate seven times a week if it did not have a constant influx of buying customers.

But why do many people have this obsession in purchasing pirated CDs when they constantly violate the law every time they do so? There are many theories on this but it seems the most logical and realistic one is the price difference between original DVDs and their pirated counterparts. In the Philippine market, original DVDs would range from around P400 going as high as P3000. The ones in Quiapo, supposedly ranges from as low as P20 up to P80. The difference in price is too big. It is understandable why many people succumb to temptation especially nowadays wherein the qualities of the original and pirated, due to the advancement in technology, are almost the same.

But, piracy is a crime. There is definitely truth in the fear of many that the Video/Movie industry may die because of this “phenomenon”. The creators of the films or shows should be given their dues. But, people are just human. Not many can pass up a bargain. Perhaps if the prices of DVDs will be brought down, like in the case of VCDs, DVD piracy may remarkably diminish. It seems the threshold of people on whether they would buy the original or not is the cost of watching a movie in the theaters. If the original would cause the same or below it (fat chance), they would buy it; if it is higher, they definitely would not purchase it, but might buy a pirated copy of it, depending on how much they would like to see the show.

Of course, there is another solution to DVD piracy proliferation, convince the pirate patrons that VCDs are as good as DVDs (but of course original VCDs would be pegged at a P99 minimum).

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A piracy bust escapade in Malaysia (last visited: September 5, 2006, 1:33 pm): http://www.michaelooi.net/archives/2004/09/some_happenings.html

Links to sites about DVD piracy in the Philippines:

http://baratillo.net/?p=502 (last visited: September 5, 2006; 1:44 pm)

http://www.philippinenews.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=7b9dd24972f9e220f4978a5ac58459c0 (last visited: September 5, 2006; 2:09 pm)

http://www.mac.doc.gov/PressMain/Jan03Press/Jan10PhilippinesEnforce.html (last visited: September 5, 2006; 2:14 pm)

A link with a heated debate on Philippine DVD Piracy (last visited: September 5, 2006; 2:36 pm)

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/forums/viewtopic.php?p=44504

Power of Online Venom

In today's world, the cliché the pen is mightier than the sword has been modified to take into consideration all other forms of electronic communication that now shares the role of the proverbial pen. There are text messages, e-mails, internet discussion groups, and of course, blogs.

Hollywood put the blog's power to the test with its publicity campaign for Snakes on a Plane (SoaP). More than six months before its release, SoaP already generated hype because bloggers and internet discussion groups began to discuss it online. There were all sorts of reactions, predictions, and suggestions made, so much so that the movie's producers actually incorporated the suggestions into the movie. The internet was actually one of the main tools used to promote the film, even though the ones doing the promoting were mostly fans. Producers apparently thought that if people talked about it, they're probably going to see it. And so they encouraged bloggers and other net users to talk about it some more. There was so much interest that producers of other studios even considered coming up with a new line of movies meant to generate internet buzz on how awful they are.

Too bad for the producers, SoaP didn't do as well as they had hoped. Sure, it debuted at number 1, but it earned only $15M, which was much less than what they expected. What happened? they asked. With all that hype they were so sure the movie would be a runaway box office hit.

Does this mean the cyber-pen hasn't got much power after all? No it doesn't. If anything, this proves that it's a mighty force to be reckoned with. Didn't people believe talk that it was going to be a bad movie and refused to see it? The problem was that producers psychologized people's reactions too much. As one writer put it, when people said the movie was going to be crappy, they meant it. They did NOT mean "it's so crappy you should see it." They just meant it would be crappy. Period. Most people didn't want to watch a movie that was already heralded as awful.

While blogs and other cyber-pens are powerful enough, it would probably work best if it went hand in hand with more traditional forms of advertising. Also, consider that while a lot of the world has internet access, most still rely on word of mouth or on newpapers and TV to clue them in on what movies to watch out for. It would help if people encouraged others to watch a film because it was GOOD. As SoaP has shown the world, there are a lot of people out there who mean exactly what they say when they write on their blogs. And if people say that something is going to be another bad movie and a waste of theater money, you can bet that most of them mean it.

INTERESTING LINKS:

www.snakesonaplane.com - Official website; last visited Aug. 27, 2006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_on_a_plane - interesting article from Wikipedia; last visited Aug. 27, 2006

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002234847 - last visited Aug. 27, 2006

http://datelinehollywood.com/archives/2006/08/21/hollywood-wonders-why-crappy-movie-isnt-a-hit/ - last visited Aug. 27, 2006

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/movies/15298563.htm - last visited Aug. 27, 2006

http://snakesonablog.com/ - last visited Aug. 27, 2006

http://beautifulcandy.blogspot.com/2006/05/snakes-on-mania.html - last visited Aug. 27, 2006

Quest in Defining the Governance

If you make a search on your favorite search engine in the net for the term “Internet Governance”, you’d have a bountiful harvest of literally thousands of results (actually, Google will tell you it’s about 2,790,000 results) from all over the world. These results would lead to sites devoted to various topics and not only limited to International Law and governments.

What is this Internet Governance?

Funnily, despite the interest and devotion that it has sparked, the honest answer to this query is, “I don’t exactly know.” The bigwigs and authorities of this so-called Internet Governance have not yet come up with an actual definition for this concept. Ever since the 2003 World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), the closest thing to a definition ever produced is just a proposed one that is nothing near finality and is subject to change whenever deemed necessary. It appears the root cause of this seemingly unending quest is the lack of agreement between the parties involved (nations) on what it should encompass. Some would love to limit this ‘governance’ to just the system of allocating domain names and IP addresses on the net. Others would like to embrace everything related to the Internet going as far as those only remotely-related. The logical and obvious solution to this problem is finding the middle ground of the spectrum. However, no matter how clear it is to the parties that this is the key, a deadlock on the definition of Internet Governance still ensues. Some blame the self-serving interest of the supporters of each end of the spectrum. Some blame commercialism. But could it be the reason behind the cause of the problem is the hesitance of society to concretely have the Internet under some sort of governance?

It is no secret that one of the Internet’s alluring characteristics is its rather free and unregulated environment. Admittedly, the Internet has done fine without any formal governance. To a layman, placing the Internet under a governance is tantamount to restricting its use. Sure cyber crimes are becoming more rampant, and sure, Internet transactions are becoming more and more complicated, but the Internet has not collapsed because of these rising problems. Its popularity has not even diminished by its emerging setbacks.

Perhaps the solution to defining Internet Governance is knowing exactly what this ‘Governance’ will be. A governance incorporating the norms that have successfully kept the Internet from succumbing to a state of utter chaos and anarchy might be the key. It may be more palatable to the stakeholders involved and more attuned to the issues and problems of the net. Indeed, “Why fix it when it is not broken?” and “Why break it in the attempt of trying to fix it?”

Yes, the answer is striking a balance between interests. The Internet has defied all odds and has managed to keep itself alive and even thrive all these years. Perhaps the answer lies in the current Internet system—among those who just use and enjoy it.


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Links with insightful ideas on how governance of the Internet should be:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/reagle/regulation-19990326.html

-- last visited on August 21, 2006; 6:29 PM Phil. Time

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:uOitgSmvhPMJ:www.wgig.org/docs/book/

-- last visited on August 22, 2006; 10:12 AM Phil. Time (html versiond of a pdf file)

http://afrispa.skybuilders.com/users/eric/blog.20051113165257.html

-- last visited on August 22, 2006; 10:32 AM Phil. Time

Hope for the Future

These days, it's very rare for a person to walk into a room and not meet someone who has worked, is working, or is planning on working at a call center. For a lot of Philippine graduates, the call center has become THE place of employment. With starting pay that is much, much higher than minimum wage, it's no wonder fresh graduates (even not-so-fresh graduates) are lining up to join call center companies.

Call centers began to thrive in the Philippines because of the phenomenon of the outsourcing boom. What exactly does outsourcing mean? Answers.com states that it is contracting with organizations outside your country for work that could otherwise be done by employees within your company. More and more companies from developed countries are hiring people in poorer Asian and European countries to do all sorts of work: from making 3-d models to answering customer queries to transcribing medical information. All this is happening for the simple reason that it's much cheaper to outsource rather than to hire their own countrymen. Employers consider this cheap but quality labor. For the laborers, though, it’s not really cheap. Consider where these laborers live… $10 a day is not much to a multinational company, but it’s more than minimum wage to a Filipino.

Call center services are just one of the outsourcing sectors being promoted by the Philippine government. The others are: animation, software development, medical transcription, and business process outsourcing*. The amazing thing is that there are not enough people to fill the jobs being offered. Things have certainly changed. When our age group was in grade school, our Social Studies teachers used to tell us that there aren't enough jobs for Filipinos, and that's the reason why there are so many OFWs out there. Who would have thought that there would actually come a time where there are too many jobs instead of too many people?

The sad problem is that a lot of Filipinos are not qualified for these jobs. Thankfully, this problem is now being addressed. Some companies serve as training centers for would-be-call center employees, and even offer English proficiency modules online. Other companies in animation are willing to train people for free, provided they work for the company.

But of course, not everything is happy and perfect in the world. There’s bound to be a sourpuss (or several) out there. For example, citizens of developed countries are afraid that outsourcing will rob them of their jobs. Is this a valid fear? Maybe, maybe not. But there are people out there who believe that with the savings and income made from outsourcing, companies are now getting the means to develop programs that have need for their countrymen’s expertise, thus disproving the theory that outsourcing takes away jobs**.

Overall, outsourcing is definitely a gift. And for a third world country like the Philippines, it just might be our hope for the future.

*http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=1&story_id=52593; visited August 14, 2006
** http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/08/us_tech_workers.html; visited August 14, 2006


Links:
ml;jsessionid=KEF1MUMEYYROUQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN
http://www.cio.com/archive/071506/global_outsourcing.html
http://www2.cio.com/research/surveyreport.cfm?ID=10
http://www.blogsource.org/2005/10/japanese_animat.html
http://www.i-telco.com/call-center-outsourcing-services-in-philippines.html

Some Companies that Practice Outsourcing:
http://www.ajketcher.com/
http://www.3dstormstudio.com/
http://www.accenture.com/