“Citizen-Centric Benefits of ICT: Bridging the Digital Divide,” was aimed at helping broaden public awareness and understanding on the various dimensions of the digital divide and on how the different government and private sectors are moving to narrow the gap through strategic use of ICT. The Forum was in support of UNESCO’s Medium Term Strategy for Asia and the Pacific, which points out to the importance of developing information and communication technology at bridging the digital divide and halving the incidence of poverty by the year 2015.

Specifically, the Forum focused on best practices and programs that took the challenge of making ICT citizen-centric or being able to provide information and services relevant to the needs of the Filipino citizen. The best practices were concrete showcases of how ICT can promote good governance, efficient business management, sense of values, and speed in court processes.

Among others, the presentations include:

Issues of digital divide

The session started with a lecture on the issues of the digital divide. Digital divide was defined as an imbalance in the access of information and communication technology vital to human survival. Among the reasons given for the divide were: a) lack of access to technological structures; b) computer illiteracy; c) dominance of the English language as medium of communication in the Internet; d) irrelevance of the Net content to the people’s needs; and e) unaffordable cost for computer access. Strategies to address the divide were given in the lecture. One of these strategies is through the presentation and hopefully replication, of successful strategies in the use of ICT—which was the Forum’s highlight described below.

eLearning: ICT in education

The talk centered on the issues and challenges associated with the use of ICT in education, particularly in e-learning. These concerns include: a) the shift in the learning paradigm from being teacher-centered to learner-centered; b) the need for skills retooling in the new educational environment; and c) the implications of the convergence in technologies which require, among others, creativity in redesigning learning packages, safeguarding against technological dependence, and preparation of students to be productive and competitive in the global digital environment characterized by information deluge.

e-Legal: ICT in the courtroom

Areas of focus were on the technological innovations where the legal sector is moving in to bring the courts closer to the public. The use of ICT in the courtroom has provided the legal sector speed, convenience, and cost-effectiveness in facilitating its legal requirements. ICT initiatives by the court include: a) the creation of a website which posts, among others, the latest Supreme Court decisions, latest issuances and a list of the country’s lawyers; b) computer-aided transcription facilities which provide same day transcription for court proceedings; c) the use of video teleconferencing especially for cases where minors are protected from having to physically face their aggressors, and d) legal research facilities.

Projects in the pipeline consist of: a) case tracking system for monitoring development of cases; b) info-message facility for sending messages/updates on court hearing schedules to lawyers and litigants; c) electronic filing of pleadings and d) rules on cyber notarization of documents.

e-Business: ICT in agriculture and business

A World Bank Awardee project, b2bpricenow.com demonstrated how doing ebusiness with farmers could be both profitable and service-oriented. Providing an e-marketplace for farmers through its website which posts an index of current market prices for agricultural products, the company assists farmers in selling their produce at reasonably profitable prices without the need to go to the middle men. The company also shared how collaborative work with the government, schools, and with an IT company had expanded the project to provide farmers ICT and business training and additional sources of income.

e-Governance

• Information Technology of E-Commerce Council (ITECC)

The government’s strategy in addressing the digital divide is directed towards the building of an e-enabled society through ICT development. This encompasses five strategies: a) IT retooling of the country’s human resource to provide the world’s e-service requirements; b) development of the local government to provide efficient service to the citizens through enabling ICT systems and strategies; c) outsourcing to allow private sector participation in the development of the country’s ICT system; d) development of a government portal as a single point of entry for transaction; and e) finance sourcing to develop the ICT systems.

The government is also looking into the creation of system that will facilitate the papers of the overseas Filipino workers, the deployment of community e-Centers to provide the communities the facilities for access to the Net and the establishment of a Department of ICT to specifically focus on implementing the government’s ICT strategies.

• National Statistics Office (NSO)

The adoption of ICT by NSO was prompted by the need to provide efficient and fast service to the citizens as document request increased from 12,000 per day in 2001 to 13,900 per day in 2002. The three major projects prioritized by the agency are: a) Civil Registry System IT Project that computerizes the storage and retrieval of civil registry documents; b) e-Census Service which facilitates filing application or requests for birth certificates or marriage contracts through the web; and c) NSO Help line Plus where filing application/request for documents is done through the telephone.

These IT resolutions adopted by the agency have resulted into a) shorter processing time for documents; b) decentralization of NSO services as it was able to provide more service points nationwide; and c) better information support for the agency’s operations.