I REMEMBER writing about speed and accuracy issues in our election system.
I am confidently qualified to talk about these issues, because many years ago I was the chairman twice of the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) Computerization Technical Working Group (TWG), appointed by both the Senate and the Comelec.
At that time, I took the position that we had to choose one over the other, meaning that we could not have speed and accuracy at the same time.
After realizing the new advances in the field of information and communications technology (ICT) at this time, I have come to the conclusion that nowadays, it is possible to achieve speed and accuracy at the same time.
However, that conclusion comes with the caveat that the human factor will not come into play, such as corrupt people wanting to slow down the system for their own purposes, or to tamper with the data, also for their own purposes.
As far as the internet is concerned, I now say that we could have speed and economy at the same time, the end result of which is having faster and cheaper internet, without sacrificing one over the other.
I could have been wrong, but in case of the elections, I really believed at that time that counting the results too fast would result in lesser accuracy and vice versa, prioritizing accuracy more would cause the system to go slower.
Looking back, it could be said that former Comelec Commissioner Gus Lagman was correct in saying that only the transmission should be computerized because even now, the manual counting is not really that slow.
In other words, the slowness would have been tolerable, for as long as the accuracy is commendable. In the case of internet prices however, I would dare say that long ago and up to now, it could have gone lower if only the human factor did not come into play.
Internet is internet, in much the same way that rice is rice. What that means is that the price of internet in one country should not differ much from the price of internet in other countries. That should be the same reasoning in the case of rice, meaning that the price of rice in one country should not differ much from the price of rice in other countries.
Just in case you have not noticed, I am sorry to tell you that the price of internet in the Philippines is higher in many other countries. By some stretch of our imaginations, that might have been tolerable if it was faster than many other countries, but sadly it is not.
That is the same story in the case of rice, the price of rice here is higher than many other countries. Again, that might have been tolerable if the quality of rice is better, but sadly, it is not. (To be continued)/PN
