The Philippines is one of world’s largest suppliers of ICT professionals, which was also verified by one of the presenters following the challenging keynote speech of Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan on September 17, 2005 at University of the Philippines Theater, Diliman, Quezon City.

Corollary to this, a 2002 study conducted by International Telecommunication Union (an institution based in Geneva, Switzerland) states that:

“The Internet market in the Philippines is very distinct. Although there are a large number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) most of them are little more than resellers of bandwidth. Only those ISPs that are telcos with facilities-based licenses are allowed to directly provide their own national or international connectivity. One anomaly of the Philippine market is that there is wide opinion about the number of Internet subscribers and users with estimates of the number of users ranging from 500’000 to two million.

Another distinctly Philippine phenomenon is the widespread use of mobile Short Messaging Service (SMS). ”Texting” has developed into a Philippine cultural trait with one of the highest SMS usage rates in the world. This has interesting implications as a precursor to mobile Internet access.” (http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/cs/philippines/index.html)

In the three years time after the very revealing case study, much has changed in the realm of ICTs in the Philippines. There is much interest on the part of the government and in most cases the private sectors in reducing the digital divide and enhancing access to ICTs, but apparently, their efforts are still not enough in order for the country to compete in the global arena.

There are many more innovative projects designed by the members of the academic communities and their partners that are indispensable in breaching the ICT knowledge divide in a developing country like the Philippines of more than 86 million populace. The youth are not only the ones that should only be educated and introduced to the realm of ICTs but also those “once upon a time youth” who dominate and or leaders who influence the law and policy making bodies of the country.

In this light, one of the welcome developments is the Philippine Youth Congress in Information Technology on September 15-17, 2005 at the country’s premier academic institution’s theater in Diliman, duly organized by the UP Information Technology Training Center (UP ITTC), the DOST Virtual Center for Technology Innovation in Information Technology (VCTI-IT), and the Diliman Computer Science Foundation, Inc. (DCSF) in cooperation with various organizations and lots of sponsors from the ICT industry. Participants come from all regions of the country including Cordilleral Administrative Region (CAR), and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Topics of the National Youth Congress in IT include:

e-Learning
Trends in Gaming
Network Management
Windows Vista
Digital Entertainment
IT Careers in the Health Sector
Career Opportunities and Work Readiness
The Japanese Information Technology Industry
Careers in Embedded Systems Development
3D Animation and Visual Effects
Wi-Fi Technology and Third Generation Gadgets
Internet Security
Change Management
The Philippine e-Library Project
Mobile Computing
Network Viruses
Bioinformatics: Challenge and Opportunity
ICT and the Call Center Industry
Robotics

In this conference, the IT professionals who shared their expertise come from the youth sector of the Philippine society. I congratulate the organizers, the sponsors, and my co-participants for being part of the inspiring moments that should form part in our daily newspapers and broadcast media and not just the bad things that transpired in our society.

A project/program of this kind is worth supporting and emulating.