TECH4GOOD
It is not enough for economic growth, structural reforms, and strengthening governance and institutions to prepare countries for the future. To achieve future readiness, countries will have to find that optimal place that combines more traditional measures for promoting growth with more forward looking strategies especially as they relate to digital technologies. Digital transformation anchored on enabling digital policies is the backbone of a country’s future readiness.
These are the key messages of the 2023 Future Readiness Economic Index (FREI), an annual global report of the Swiss-based think tank, Descartes Institute, and commissioned by Google.
Future Readiness is beginning to be recognized as a critical concept in Economic development today. It is defined in the report as a country’s ability to anticipate and adapt to emerging challenges while exploiting opportunities for sustainable development and global competitiveness.
Philippines is the only country among the 13 Asia Pacific countries covered in the report that suffered a decline in the ranking. Among the ASEAN countries, it ranked sixth at 82nd following Indonesia at 73 and Vietnam at 61. Singapore continues to the world’s most future ready country.
Despite the slip, the Philippines actually showed strength in several indicators where it ranked number one such as tech exports, AI regulations, online content, and data privacy. It also ranked high in several indicators among them cybersecurity policies at 19, cloud governance also at 19, and medium and high-tech industry at 17.
The FREI report has four pillars: Physical capital which include indicators on the digital, transportation, and energy infrastructures; Competitiveness covering digital policies, market environment, R&D, and innovation; Human capital which covers skills and the ability to attract, grow, and retain talents; Technology covering digital usage, digital content creation, and Industry 4.0. The Philippines ranked pretty well in Competitiveness at the 50th place.
The results for the Philippines shows a long list of areas where it can improve its future readiness to take advantage of opportunities that digital technologies offer. If we look at digital infrastructures, focus should be given to providing access, increasing coverage, and affordability. This maybe the best time to reform our country’s spectrum management policies such as the repeal of the Commonwealth-era Radio Broadcasting Act of 1931 that governs wireless communications today.
Under Human Capital, the PISA scores of the Philippines greatly affected its ranking in this pillar. It is comforting to see adjustments being made by the Department of Education to ensure better results for our basic education students as well as improving the capacities of our teachers. We also need to address the current trend of decreasing enrolment in the tertiary level.
Surprisingly, it is in the technology pillar where Philippines really has to double up. It has to increase its mobile broadband subscriptions considering that mobile is the means most Filipinos would prefer to use. Internet domain registrations has to be increased and more mobile app locally developed if we want to see better results in the future for the country in this pillar. We should also capacitate our industries in the use of AI tools to get them ready for the future. More Philippine based research work on AI would help achieve that.
Despite the fact that the Philippines achieved excellent scores in several digital policy indicators, the report shows that it needs to come up with better ICT policies to improve its regulatory authority, mandate, regime, and competition framework. The fact that market dominance in the country is controlled by few big business entities did not work well in terms of ensuring a better market environment.
The results of the 2023 FREI should provide our policy makers a systematic framework to evaluate our country’s strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement that would result to better plans, policies, and programs. Ensuring future readiness is going to be a work in progress as mentioned in the report. The results should provide us with guideposts to see how far and how fast we are going. [email protected]
(The author is an executive member of the National Innovation Council, lead convener of the Alliance of Tech Innovators for the Nation (ATIN), vice president of the Analytics and AI Association of the Philippines, and vice president, UP System Information Technology Foundation.)