Our national readiness for a digital world is ‘emerging’

The government places a high priority toward accelerating national processes toward a digital world. Digitalization is an important objective that could create many advantages for national development.

Incentivizing digitalization in the economy. If achieved with speed, digitalization will bring major gains in the national economy. Costs will go down, greater economic efficiency will be achieved, and faster development in its many aspects will proceed.

All these tell us that achieving progress in the digital world requires some national commitment toward sustaining development goals that are linked toward the improvement of education and training of the overall population.

With costs lowered, economic activities increase and incomes rise. Ultimately, these further bring about funding improvements that raise the demand for better educational and training goals for our citizens.

The learning process to achieve this world, however, could be tricky. The process itself depends on the pace by which the country moves toward modernity.

While episodes of economic booms facilitate improvements in these goals, disruptions brought about by economic and political crises in the nation could set us back in these endeavors.

Problems and roadblocks. Recent 2019 findings in an international assessment of performance in mathematics and science among 58 countries is a shocker to Philippine national authorities, particularly in science and education.

Filipino grade schoolers performed significantly poorly in comparison with many countries in problem solving related to mathematics and science. The gap in scores with some East Asian  countries in the same stage of development was specially revealing.

It is a warning sign that Philippine educational policy must improve in vital directions: In strategic policy posture; in resources devoted to education; in the delivery of training programs for teachers and students; and in encouraging other aspects of digitalization to flourish in the country (see later, below.)

Digital readiness framework. This year, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) released a study of 10 developing middle income countries, including the Philippines, in terms of measures of digital readiness.

The other nine countries included Indonesia and Vietnam from ASEAN countries, and Uzbekistan from the West Asia, to Fiji in the Pacific.

This is a highly readable and informative study to enable understanding of our current distance from the ideal digital frontier. The digital frontier is the current state of the art in our technological world.

It is useful to report at the outset that the Philippines did not score well in digital readiness study compared to Uzbekistan and Indonesia. These two countries scored well in terms of overall readiness in relation to the countries in the study.

The Philippines would have done almost as well as Indonesia were it not for the essentially low performance under the measure of infrastructure for digitalization, especially the higher cost of internet connectivity, which has led to lower usage. A main culprit in our case is the cost of power and electricity in the country.

Explaining the basic of model of digital readiness. A measurable model of digital readiness can be constructed.

The ADB study starts from the idea of the “ mature digital model.” The mature or “ideal” model is given a measure of 100 (for 100 percent) which is a measure of the frontier or highest ideal level.

This model digital system has five major components, each of which is also measurable, the highest measure being 100. The components are: (1) Infrastructure, which among others, represent the nature of internet connectivity, usage, and costs; (2) Government policy and institutions, such as declared policy and funding support, curriculum content and delivery; (3) Schools and teacher capacity, equipment, governance and community support; (4) Students and parents, which measures student capability, including the influence of home and family; and (5) Providers, which provide e-learning systems that are offered, their on-line content, and the capacity of partners and sponsors in providing service.

In the study, the countries were classified into four stages as: “Initial” (for Readiness measures of up to 35); “Emerging” (from 36 to 75); “Developed” (from 76 to 90); and “Mature” (from 91 to 100).

Experts scored all the 10 countries under these five different components of digitalization. And then, the scores were  averaged to enable a single measure of readiness.

Many of the 10 countries were scored under “Emerging,” but sometimes found themselves in the lowest stage, under “Initial.”

Finally, it is interesting to compare the measure of readiness for the three ASEAN countries included in the study. In general, all three countries have close measures of readiness overall. But they differ in strength of performance along the five components of readiness.

Of the three, Indonesia has the highest score of readiness. Vietnam is in the middle. The low performance for the Philippines is due to the score of 26 for the Infrastructure component, which still placed it under “Initial.” Indonesia’s score for infrastructure is low, at 42.4, but it is much better than that of the Philippines. Vietnam has a high performance for this component.

Let me quote the ADB study for its comment on the Philippine Infrastructure component:

“… Except for urban and rural electricity access, the Philippines lags behind on most infrastructural parameters. Just under 18 percent of households are connected to the Internet. The high cost of an Internet-enabled smartphone (over 46 percent of GNI per capita) weighs down on its performance. • While almost 80 percent of households have a TV, cable TV subscriptions coverage is only 25.2 per 1,000 persons. Among the 10 (countries in the study), the Philippines has relatively high fixed broadband speeds, but is surpassed by the model country by wide margins. • Noting differential device access among students, an expert stated that the government is aiming to accommodate different learning modalities for education delivery. For some students who have access to the Internet and devices, online learning will be promoted in the coming years. However, for the majority of students without such access, modular distance learning using TV and radio will be adopted.”

Reference: Asian Development Bank, Toward Mature Digital Education Systems: The Digital Educational Readiness Framework, April 23, 2023

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