Press Release
June 3, 2008

ANGARA SUPPORTS BILL CREATING DEPARTMENT OF ICT

Senator Edgardo J. Angara, chair of the Senate Committee on Science and Technology, expressed his support for a bill seeking to establish the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).

Under the proposed bill, DICT will assume the communications-related powers and functions of the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) and will absorb the following agencies: Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) currently under the Office of the President, the National Computer Center (NCC) under the DOTC, the Telecommunications Office of the DOTC, and the Communications Planning Service division of the DOTC.

During the hearing of the Committee on Science and Technology, Angara called for the formation of a Technical Working Group that will review the scope of the bill in terms of coverage of agencies with ICT functions and approved budgets.

Recognizing the great potential of ICT to create wealth for the country, Angara underscored the need to form a permanent entity that would promote the utilization of information and communications technology, and effectively coordinate and implement national and local ICT services.

"For instance, the Digital Village project which will enable rural farmers to use the Internet to access information on prices of goods, land records, weather forecasts, local government database and other agricultural knowledge support - thereby boosting their agriculture productivity - has been dragging on for years. This is largely due to the lack of coordination among agencies with ICT functions," he lamented.

He also cited several countries that have their own ministries dedicated for ICT.

"ICT is one of the frontier fields that will dominate the world - how we work, study and conduct business," he said. "It would be to our great disadvantage if we were left out in the field of ICT."

"Over the last two decades, China and India have used ICT to drive their economy and lift millions of their people out of pervasive poverty," Angara added.

It took less than two decades for China to develop from a country with less than 1% telephone coverage, to one with 800 million subscribers, the largest network in the world. Now, about half of all phone handsets and more than two-thirds of all personal computers in the world are produced there.

India has likewise improved its connectivity, setting up 100,000 telecenters around their country of 600,000 villages, or one in every six villages. It made a great breakthrough in bringing the benefits of technology to rural areas by setting up digital villages, or Internet kiosks which farmers can use to access market information, weather forecasts and government database, in order to increase productivity.

Presently, access to simple ICT tools in the country is limited, with only 464 personal computers catering to more than 13 million public elementary school students, or a ratio of 1:26,000. In high schools, five million students share among themselves 45,221 computers, or a ratio of 1:111.

Throughout the country, only 46 per 1,000 people own a computer. In internet penetration, the Philippines ranked 12th among 14 Asian countries.

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