number of poor families in the barangays or communities. As a result, the distribution of urgently needed financial assistance to families not included in the Listahan was delayed and the government received so much flak for it. Even until October of 2020, some recipients amounting to 1,260,119 were unable to receive the 2nd half of the cash assistance under the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) (Luci-Atienza, 2020 in Philippine Digital Justice System, 2021: 22). Another example cited by the Philippine Digital Justice System was the inability of most local government units to conduct effective contact tracing of people who may have been exposed to covid patients. As of July 30, 2020, only 0.68 out of 600 local government units surveyed had a “relatively good” contact tracing system, with an average of eight contacts per patient being able to be traced by the local contact tracing team (Gonzales, 2020 in Philippine Digital Justice System, 2021: 23). The Organization of Economic Cooperation Countries (OECD) identified a number of constraints to digitization including human resource, physical, funding, and other challenges such as legal and regulatory change, cybersecurity risks, and citizen’s privacy concerns (https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/822c0d6e-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/822c0d6e-en). Human resource constraints Scarcity in relevant ICT competencies, skills and talents may lead to agencies not having strategic digitalization plans, concentration of experts in the urban areas where pay is better to the detriment of rural or low income local government, limited ICT training especially to non-experts in the organization due to high cost of training, and non-readiness of the public to access services online. When the latter happens, the OECD cautions government agencies to adapt the digitization program to the level of readiness of the public so as not to ease them out further access to services. Physical resource constraints Lack of physical resources in digitalization program refers to the lack of ICT infrastructure highway through which the internet connectivity may be provided. A related issue is the prevalence of inadequate, unreliable and intermittent internet connectivity which disrupts office work, business meetings, classroom teaching, research, training, and the like. In the southern pat of the country, the lack or inadequate internet connectivity is exacerbated by intermittent and at time long hours of lack of power supply.Funding Constraints Generating funding support for digitalization in a low middle income country like the Philippines is always a challenge as the required resource will compete with other development priorities for approval and allocation. The political leadership must be convinced that the cost required for the establishment, maintenance, upgrading of software program and training of concerned staff may be more than recovered by the benefits. Legal and regulatory change Effective and successful implementation of digitization requires a conducive enabling environment provided by the passage of appropriate laws and/or amendments of obsolete or unresponsive laws by Congress. However, just like in seeking funding support, generating the legislative support is like competing for approval vis-à-vis legislative priorities of the members of the legislative body. Cybersecurity risks and citizen’s privacy concerns Cybersecurity risk is a serious threat to digitization program and if not addressed by government adequately may fuel apprehension and dissipate support and trust of the public. Even economically advanced countries are not exempt from hacking and cybersecurity theft. Generating and storing data in one platform makes it easy for policymakers and technical 186
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