FUTURE-PROOFING THE COUNTRY THRU DIGITIZATION

MARIA CORAZON M. MACALINO

Students, faculty members, women, programmers, government employees, local government officials, parents, and other stakeholders recently participated in the first leg of the Bayang Digital ang Bagong Pilipinas Regional Roadshow at the National University (NU) Clark to encourage citizens and the government to fully embrace digitalization across governance, public service, industries, commerce, and lifestyle. The government believes that this is part of future-proofing the country against everything: from risks to future threats, making sure that our students are exposed to what is available and ethical, as a way of protecting them. The fundamentals of ethical digital practices should be laid down to learners as a springboard for development in the future. The Department of Information and Communications Technology underscored that the agency continues to bring its services closer to the people. It strives to link Filipinos to reliable and secure connectivity and provide tools and information on the responsible use of digital data. According to the DICT, digitalization is the way in order to make our country competitive worldwide. This is the way to breach the digital divide because when you have a digital divide, you have an economic divide, a gender divide, you have a generational divide. During his 2nd State of the Nation Address last year, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. emphasized that digitalization is the call of today, and the government must fully embrace digitalization to provide better services to the people. Given this, the DICT has implemented programs and projects towards building a more inclusive and resilient digital nation.? The DICT showcased Filipino-made programs during the roadshow. Among these is the eGov PH app that allows Filipinos to access government services online through a single platform. By using the app, citizens may access their various government documents or their government contributions and benefits. It allows access to government services anytime and anywhere, from beginning a transaction and up to payment completion. The app also contains the Electronic Local Government Unit system which offers local government services such as business permit licensing, notice of violations, notification system, community tax, business tax, and real property tax. It also lets users search jobs. The National ID system has already been integrated into the app and can be accessed by the citizens. DICT taught roadshow attendees how to avoid online harms and threats. The Cybersecurity Bureau and Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center in particular gave techniques on how to protect themselves from scammers or phishing attempts. The agency also provided training opportunities through the digitaljobsPH. It also said they will explore opportunities available for training and related courses through the digital jobs program for participants to learn many other skills. On top of IT skills and digital programming, they can learn digital marketing, entrepreneurship, and many others.

-oOoThe author is a Teacher III at Bebe Anac Elementary School