Improving the Pinoys’ competitive edge

A housewife in Virginia makes a call to a package delivery service and inquires about the status of the care package that she had sent three days earlier to her husband in Kuwait, where he and 150,000 other US soldiers are massed for an invasion of Iraq.

A clerk from the carrier’s customer service division informs her that the package will arrive in two more days. The housewife thanks the clerk and before hanging up, tells her to be careful in going home because of the snowfall.

What the New York housewife doesn’t know is that she was speaking to a Filipina in the Philippines. Her call – instead of going to the carrier’s Virginia office – was routed to a call center in Quezon City, which has a contract to take service calls for the US carrier.

Many US businesses contract call centers in other countries, including the Philippines, to take service calls. The Philippines – one of the very few English-speaking countries in Asia – has the advantage to take a large slice of the call center market.

But that edge could one day be lost if Filipinos’ command of English – which is a source of pride for many – continues to deteriorate.

Not if Gus Lagman can help it. If he has his way, high school students will have to spend an extra year before moving on to college or university.

With the government’s efforts to develop the country’s information and technology industry and move the Philippines into the 21st century, that possibility is not remote. Lagman is co-chairman of the human resources development committee of the Information Technology and e-Commerce Council (ITECC), which is the country’s highest policy-making body on information and communications technology.

"We’ve found out that many of our high school graduates are really not ready for college. They should first take a validation exam and those who don’t make the grade must undergo a pre-baccalaureate year where they will be drilled in math, science and English," he said.

Shortly after the 1986 downfall of the Marcos dictatorship, Lagman founded STI Education Service Group, now the pioneer in information technology education franchising in the country.

He chaired the STI board for 17 years until 2000. He remains a director of STI but principally, he now runs Systems Standards Inc., a company he co-founded in 1987. SSI is the first and largest IBM business partner in the country.

Actually, Lagman has already spent a good 40 years in the information and communications industry, starting out as a computer programmer with IBM Phils. in 1962. He devoted his last 20 years lobbying for the country’s information and technology industry.

In the late 80s, Lagman appeared before Tariff Commission hearings to argue for the lowering of the tariff on computers. The tariff came down from 20 to 10 percent and later to three percent following the agreements that created the ASEAN Free Trade Area.

He also helped in the lobby to bring down tariffs of automated teller machines from 50 to 10 percent and then later to three percent under the AFTA scheme.

Education woes

Lagman believes the Philippines lost some of its competitiveness due to the flaws in current basic education. "Teachers have no choice but to completely promote everybody to the next level. Why? There’s no more room to hold them. A bigger group, the next batch, is coming in to replace them, and there’s no space for anyone to be left behind."

As underperformers are promoted to the next level, a pool of students who actually need remedial courses are sent to college unprepared for the work expected of them. This creates a kind of chain reaction, resulting in many college graduates being unprepared for the demands of the workplace, and even not finding the right job fit.

The deficiencies are all the more alarming as the ITECC promotes five key business areas where the Philippines supposedly has a competitive advantage over its Asian neighbors. These areas are contact centers, medical transcription, computer graphics and animation, software development, and business process outsourcing.

"We love to say that Filipinos are proficient in English but we must realize the quality of our English has gone down. And we have to do something if we want to remain competitive. The good thing is we are a naturally happy people and we are used to treating other people, especially customers, nicely. We are very service-oriented. This is something other countries don’t have," Lagman said.

Lagman has President Arroyo for an ally. As part of her efforts to revitalize the economy, Mrs. Arroyo recently ordered that English – acknowledged as the language of business – be again the medium of instruction in the country’s schools.

English was the medium of instruction in the Philippines since the beginning of the 20th century, even before the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902 ended.

In the late 1980s, the Aquino administration – in an effort to promote national unity – ordered the switch to Filipino. Since then, Filipinos have debated the pros and cons of the policy. Some Filipino historians blame English – the country’s lingua franca – for the Filipinos’ poor sense of national identity.

Lagman advises the private sector to try and balance their marketing efforts with human resource development.

"We need to prepare our people to do the jobs required by the market. The availability of qualified human resources is a pre-requisite to success in the ICT industry. That’s how they did it in the US. Boston became the IT hub in the 70s because a lot of the good schools were there like Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later, Silicon Valley in California became prominent because of the graduates from Stanford University, University of California in Berkeley and Sta. Clara University. India has been able to sustain its aggressive marketing because of its government’s support for ICT education, even as early as in the 80s," concluded Lagman.