IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

UN resident coordinator Rafaello Tarroni said that the objectives of the WSIS action plan are to build an inclusive information society, promote the use of information and knowledge for the achievement of internally-agreed development goals and address the new challenges of the information society.

BuddyWorks is a project of the University of the Philippines’ National Telehealth Center (UPM-NTC) to link medical and academic institutions nationwide for public telemedicine services, as well as provide a venue for distance learning and continued education of the country's health workers.

Under an initiative called the Wireless Access for Health (WAH), rural health clinics in four towns of Tarlac have been equipped with netbooks and wireless broadband connectivity so that they can computerize medical records of their patients using a locally developed open-source software and transmit vital information to health authorities.

“Government funding to entities and organizations should be a transparent process so that taxpayers will know exactly how their money is being spent,” Santiago said in her explanatory note on her Senate Bill No. 1675, also known as the Government Funding, Accountability and Transparency Act.

Based on the current draft of a law creating the DICT, nobody is, according to Cynthia Mamon, outgoing president of the Information Technology Association of the Philippines and president and managing director of Sun Microsystems Philippines (SunPhil).

Based on the agreement, the Zamboanga City Library under Emilia Natividad has been selected as one public library to host the Kiosk of the Philippine eLib project initiated by the National Library.

A first in Mindanao, Misamis Oriental government doctors have formed a partnership with Smart Communications Inc. (Smart) to enable medical practitioners to do consultations with patients online. The use of wireless technology was designed to improve medical care, especially in surgery, under its Smart’s Mobile Surgery Services Project.

A special order issued by the DOST’s Information and Communications Technology Office (ICT Office) creates a special working group tasked to develop the Philippine eGovernment Interoperability Framework (PeGIF), which will define the e-government that will be established.

The country slid four notches in the United Nations’ 2018 E-Governance Development Index survey.

The UN’s recent report, themed “gearing e-government to support transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies,” showed the country slipping from 75th to 71st place in 2016.

Information and communications technology (ICT) has been hailed by many governments around the world as the great enabler to achieve a higher degree of efficiency, better productivity, stronger transparency and improved government service to the people.

Politicians in a developing country such as the Philippines got the point.

One year later, the banner of President Aquino’s campaign promise – combating corruption – places the Philippines on the global radar screen for its efforts in pursuing transparent and open government. Thus, on the sidelines of the UNGA, the Philippines, together with seven other countries and nine civil society organizations, compose an international steering committee that will convene the first meeting of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) – a new multilateral initiative that “aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.”

The country was ranked 66th overall in the 2008 UN E-Government Readiness report, down from 41st in the 2005 study.

Several Asian countries likewise slipped down in the UN index including India, Singapore and Thailand. The Philippines is a few notches below China and Thailand.

In a statement, Allcard Philipines said contactless smart card technology has been in existence for two decades now and has been proven reliable in other countries.

“The danger is the possibility of our (present) system not being recognized by other countries which are using contactless card technology,” said Allcard marketing manager Franz Reyes.

‘Smarter Philippines’ consists of the following components: Smarter Governance, Smarter People, Smarter High-Tech Industry, Smarter Computing, Smarter SMEs, Smarter Agriculture World Development, Smarter Environmental Healthcare, Energy and Transport, Smarter Disaster and Mitigation, Public Safety and Smarter Cities.

Long has the country held the reputation for its young, skilled, and technology-enabled population. In fact, the annual We Are Social’s digital report regularly ranks the country as among the most active internet and social media users on the planet.

This bespeaks of strong economic fundamentals that could carry the country’s economic narrative to further heights post-pandemic. Given that the current pandemic situation is controlled, the World Bank sees the Philippine economy expanding at 4.7% in 2021, before accelerating to 5.9% in 2022 and 6.0% in 2023, contributing to renewed progress in poverty reduction.