TECH4GOOD
Monchito Ibrahim
The famous French writer and philosopher, Voltaire, once said “If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.”
Last July 21, I participated in the virtual Senate consultative hearing organized by the office of Senator Sonny Angara. Attended by around 115 participants from different government offices, and business groups, it was meant to get a feel of how the digital stakeholders look at four digitalization bills the good senator plans to refile in the 19th Congress. Those bills were actually part of the bunch of digitalization-related legislations filed in the last Congress but did not make the finish line. One of these bills, the Philippine Digital Workforce Competitiveness Act, however, made it to the office of the President for his consideration.
I attended the hearing on behalf of my organization, ATIN, a coalition of tech industry players advocating for the inclusive growth and development of the digital economy. ATIN supports all four bills and, like most of the other organizations represented, intends to participate in further refining the said bills.
Before the week ended, the Philippine business sector together with the foreign chambers came out with their list of 24 priority bills they want the 19th Congress to pass. The list includes legislative bills aimed at making the country become a more attractive investment destination, driving the growth of the digital economy, creating the work environment in economic zones more attuned to the changing workforce attitude, and making it easy for everyone to transact with the government.
The digital bills dovetail with the current mindset of the new administration to streamline the government bureaucracy and implement a rightsizing initiative. The digital transformation of the bureaucracy should not only result in significant savings but also make the government work like a well-oiled machine, leaner but meaner. This is where the two soon-to-be-refiled bills, the e-Government Act and the National Digital Transformation Act, would be of relevance. The latter would create a national framework for digital competency with a focus on information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, building digital trust, secure computing, and problem-solving.
The Better Internet Act and the Open Access in Data Transmission Act are meant to address the current gaps in the country’s digital infrastructure and make it more inclusive and world-class. It is not easy to set up adequate connectivity in every corner of the Philippines, it is an archipelago making the infrastructure build-up more expensive. Thankfully, the cost of internet access by satellite has gone down significantly making it easier for service providers, including the government, to connect far-flung islands and missionary areas.
ATIN supports the refiling, albeit with changes, of the SIM Registration Act. Aimed at making mobile telephony more trustworthy and secure, it will also help put an end to those unnerving spam calls and messages we all are getting. Being able to link spam messages to a registered number would certainly make those spammers think twice.
In order to address the shifting workplace preferences of the workforce, our organization also supports amendments to the CREATE and PEZA laws that would allow for work-from-home arrangements which have become the preferred set-up of most tech-enabled organizations mostly IT-BPM companies operating in PEZA zones. We believe that the future of work would be working anywhere and anytime as long as there is internet access available and with the appropriate device and app. ATIN also sees the bill creating science and technology parks in the regions would help drive innovations to be developed in places outside of Metro Manila and Metro Cebu.
Amending the law creating the Department of Information and Communications Technology to strengthen and make clear its regulatory powers, the e-Commerce Act to reflect the current realities of the market, the law creating the National Telecommunications Commission to give it more teeth in asserting its spectrum management powers and the Data Privacy Act to make it more adaptable to the data privacy regimes of economies outside APEC are legislations we need to create an enabling environment to make our digital economy grow.
We may be seeing the emergence of digital payment platforms as the preferred means of fund transfer by everyone. The Digital Payments Act is supposed to mandate all government offices, including local governments to accept and use digital payment platforms resulting in a more convenient way of paying for some government services. In addition, another bill designed to strengthen the digital transformation capacity of all local government units will allow them to streamline their operations and processes making it easier for everyone to transact with them.
If passed, these legislative initiatives will definitely help push our country’s digital economy to prosper. I still dream of the time when I can do everything I want digitally using my mobile phone. How about legislating a mobile-first mindset?
(The author is the lead convenor of the Alliance for Technology Innovators for the Nation (ATIN), vice president of the Analytics Association of the Philippines, and vice president, UP System Information Technology Foundation.)