ICT, BPO stakeholders to gather 6,000 petitioners against EO 47

CEBU, Philippines - Stakeholders of the Information and Communications Technology and the Business Process Outsourcing industry across the country, are hoping to gather at least 6,000 petitioners against the implementation of Executive Order 47.

The group, which will be led by the ICT and BPO sectors in Davao, hopes to convince President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III to reconsider the implementation of the order.

Excluding students, 600,000 of the country's workforce are employed in the BPO and ICT sectors.

“We will vigorously campaign for BPO employees, students and other stakeholders in the petition to create a Department of ICT through the virtual petition site. We hope to target at least 6000 petitioners,” said Wit G. Holganza, chief executive officer (CEO) of ZipIT Solutions and Nanoscript Inc., based in Davao City.

In a emailed letter circulated among the BPO/ICT stakeholders across the Philippines, Holganza said that this idea was conceptualized after several discussions and meetings held by the prime movers in the BPO/ICT industry in Davao.

“We support the NICP-led implementation of the general assembly regarding EO47, which will be a forum by which the voices of the IT and BPO community will be heard. We hope that this assembly results to a strategic plan that will further the causes of the ICT and IT-BPO community,” Holganza said in the letter.

The country’s BPO/ICT stakeholders maintained that the controversial EO 47 gives little value to ICT as under the new order, the department will be handled by an executive director, despite the upward trend of the ICT bodies through the years as a result of the executive acts of PNoy's predecessors, from Ramos to Arroyo.

Since the time of Ramos in the National Information Technology Council (NITC) and the Information Technology and Electronic Commerce Council (ITECC) under Arroyo - the said bodies were chaired by the presidents themselves. Notable to mention is that it is in fact the DTI and DOTC and not the DOST that played major roles in the councils which were forerunners of CICT.

Stakeholders believe that this history can be still be re-written. “In the chronology of things, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) should have come next. It is up to every ordinary citizen like you and me to re-write and correct this timeline and put the Philippines back on track again.”

 Likewise, stakeholders also claimed that EO 47 is a piece of document which content is much more ancient than EO 190 S. 1998 which created the NITC. “This shows how the current administration, wittingly or unwittingly underestimates the value of ICT and the significance of the ICT sector in national development compared to how it was viewed by the past administrations.”

Last week, the BPO/IT stakeholders specifically in the regional areas, released its official position paper expressing its opposition on the EO 47.

The position paper was signed by major organizations in the BPO/ICT sector which include Cebu Educational Development Foundation for IT (Cedfit), Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for ICT (BNEFIT), Cagayan de Oro ICT Council (CDO ICT), Davao City Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Southern Luzon Technological College Foundation Inc., Cavite State University, and Iloilo Federation for Information Technology.

The group is united on its brave appeal to the President to reconsider the EO 47, which transferred the former Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT), under the shelter of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). - THE FREEMAN