REPUBLIC Act 10844 creating the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) declares that it is the policy of the State to “promote the development and widespread use of emerging ICT and foster and accelerate the convergence of ICT and ICT-enabled facilities”.
Happy as happy can be, I am very happy that this provision was included in the new law that created the DICT.
Just when I thought that everyone had practically forgotten convergence as a goal, now comes this provision in the new law. I extend my congratulations and gratitude to all the senators and congressmen who crafted the law, and I hope that they will continue to support the full implementation of the law.
I could not exactly recall what happened before, but I still remember that it was PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan who was aggressively promoting convergence some years ago. Due perhaps to some changing business conditions, he appeared to have shifted away from convergence and has moved on to other priorities.
In particular, I recall how Chairman Pangilinan bought several radio stations, for some reasons that were really not known at that time. On my part however, I speculated that he was planning to use the plain old telephone system (POTS) infrastructure to distribute radio signals nationwide. That did not push thru either, but that would have been a good example of what convergence could do.
I do recall, however, that when I was Director General of the National Computer Center (NCC), the National Computer Board (NCB) of Singapore was still in the process of transforming into the new Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore.
As I understood it, the mission of IDA at that time was to achieve convergence and multimedia integration for their country. Guided by that goal, the Singapore government converged all information and communications functions into IDA.
They did not stop there however, because they also included film and music. Although the IDA appears to be an independent authority, it is actually under the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), being classified as a Statutory Board under the MCI.
I also recall that during the early days of the NCB, it was being helped by the NCC because NCC was already ahead of them at that time, and they had much to learn from us. The relationship between NCB and NCC at that time was somehow akin to the relationship between the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and some ASEAN ministries of agriculture at that time, wherein the Philippines was advanced in rice technologies while the other countries were still trying to keep up with us. The rest is history, because it appears that the IDA is now the one providing assistance to NCC, and the Philippines is now importing from the other ASEAN countries.
Moving fast forward to the present times, the MCI has announced that it will merge the IDA with the Media Development Authority (MDA) “as a converged regulator and promoter”. What is very interesting about the announced merger is that the combined IDA and MDA will be restructured to create not just one, but two new bodies. The first one will be the Infocommunications Media Development Authority (IMDA) of Singapore and the second one will be the Government Technology Organization (GTO), which according to them will lead digital transformation in the public sector. Although the reports are still hazy, it appears that the division of labor between the IMDA and the GTO is very clear, because IMDA is for the private sector while GTO is for the public sector. (To be continued)/PN
