Low-key community e-centers uplift Filipinos

BAGUIO City—Lives of Filipinos have been improving since 2004, courtesy of e-centers, but most people would probably equate these facilities with government-run shops that offer rudimentary Internet access and cheap scanning services.

An e-center operating in Zamboanga del Sur serves as a “human search engine” for American mobile telephone clients that answers to forwarded questions in under three minutes, said Andrie Silva Undal, president of the social entrepreneurial group, Wahp Foundation. Wahp is a popular online term referring to “work-at-home parents.”

Undal said the Zamboanga e-center trains and hires neighborhood youths to man the computers for queries from American mobile telephone users.

Help

Since 2009, the e-center in Tanauan, Leyte, has been helping out-of-school youths get high school diplomas. The facility offers the youths online lectures, which enable them to pass the government’s high school equivalency examinations.

These are examples of how e-centers have evolved in the last seven years, based on accounts shared during the recent 7th Knowledge Exchange Conference on Community e-centers here.

The e-centers are online government portals designed to provide public access to government services, according to Dennis Villorente, officer in charge of the National Computer Center (NCC).

The government has established hundreds of e-centers as public business centers. The series of Knowledge Exchange conferences, however, proves that e-centers could be much more, said Villorente.

The country’s e-centers network could be the right mechanism to replicate an online-social development project in India, said Srinivas Garudachar, director for Strategic Business Development of the Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd.

Garudachar said India’s e-agro project linked up farmers to suppliers, pest managers and university farm experts for a minimal fee.

Given the nature of the countryside, this online entrepreneurial model suits some e-centers in agricultural towns, he said.

The project has helped farmers obtain detailed information about their farms, including soil test results, he said.

He said the model works because its credibility relies on the impact and the improvement that the online services bring to the livelihood of poor clients.

The evolved e-centers operating in far-flung communities succeed because communities choose the online applications that would fulfill their neighborhood aspirations, Villorente said.

He said the effective models have convinced the government to start developing e-centers in every barangay.

The 2011-2016 Philippine Community e-center Roadmap intends to set up these basic e-centers in 23,000 of 42,026 barangays in the country.

“The starting point is to make [e-centers] relevant and immediately useful to community residents, believing that with repeated and collective use, the community will eventually call for, identify or even discover the e-governance applications that will best address their needs and those of different stakeholders [which the e-center] is serving,” according to the October 2007 paper, “High Impact Pro-Poor e-Governance Applications,” written by Gigo Alampay and Joel Umali for the United Nations Development Program website. The paper explored the potentials of the e-center.

According to the paper, “the pursuit of e-governance presupposes that e-centers are able to get the basics right first.”

“Many constituents … could be intimidated or [may be] uncomfortable with new technologies, or might not have a good grasp of how information and communication technologies can tangibly affect their daily lives. Basic applications and services such as Internet connectivity, web browsing, and productivity software (for word processing, spreadsheet applications and presentation, among others) need to be in place,” the paper said.

Database

But the paper said that e-centers could also serve as database for local government transactions, or become accredited pay agents serving taxpayers who apply for permits and other government documents. It said an e-center can even “assist citizens with job matching.”

Villorente said e-centers have reached a stage when these facilities could employ applications designed by government software experts. He cited a tool designed by the Department of Science and Technology that helps people assess for themselves their skill levels before they apply for a job.

Cheryl Ortega, acting NCC director for field operations, said the progress made by e-centers meant these were ready for a more efficient governance.

She urged the Philippine Community eCenter Network to establish an accreditation system that elevates the ranks of each e-center as the facility’s online services improve.—Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon