Palace has named CICT chairman--official

By Erwin Oliva - INQUIRER.net

MAKATI CITY-- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has appointed a new chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology, a government official told INQUIRER.net Thursday.

CICT Commissioner Tim Diaz de Rivera said in a chance interview that he had been told by a Palace official that a replacement had been designated for resigned chairman Ramon Sales.

Asked if he already knew who is the replacement, Diaz de Rivera said the name of the presidential appointee was not disclosed but the Palace official said the new chairman came from the information technology industry.

Diaz de Rivera was left as officer-in-charge when Sales filed his indefinite leave effective June 30, 2007.

Arroyo accepted his resignation this month.

The CICT commissioner left public service due to health reasons.

Prior to being appointed as chairman of the CICT, Sales was a banking executive at the Bank of the Philippine Islands.

Diaz de Rivera said that Sales' personal expectations about his job and the real demands of the position did not match.

The CICT has been rocked over the past years with resignations from its commissioners, including its chairman.

Diaz de Rivera is currently the only commissioner left under this Palace-created commission after Lorenzo Formoso was moved to the Department of Transportation and Communication (DoTC) following the decision to move back the Telecommunications Office under the DoTC.

Formoso however remains a legal counsel to CICT

Cyber cops to stamp out human trafficking, child porn online

By Alcuin Papa - Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines -- Human traffickers, online child molesters and perpetrators of child pornography, beware!

The Philippine National Police (PNP) now has cyber cops surfing the Internet for websites that traffic Filipino women and children and abuse children online.

According to Director Geary Barias, chief of the PNP’s Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management, a proposal to set up a Women and Children’s Crimes Division (WCCD) in Camp Crame has been approved by the National Police Commission.

The new unit, which will be operational by end of August, will focus on child pornography and the trafficking of females, on and off the web.

On Thursday, around 100 police officers and government prosecutors finished a four-day course for law enforcers on how to address the trafficking of children and women on the Internet.

The seminar, held at the National Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP), featured speakers from international groups like the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC), the Interpol, the United States Embassy and Microsoft Phil.

“The seminar is an eye-opener for law enforcers on the existence of child pornography and human trafficking. We are committed to control all crimes, in the virtual world or otherwise,” Barias said.

He said it gave the PNP the opportunity to network with foreign counterparts and to strengthen relationships with international law enforcement agencies in the fight against transnational crimes.

Chief Superintendent Yolanda Tanigue, chief of the DIDM’s women and children’s crimes division, said the new cyber cops would be using “sting” and surveillance operations against child molesters.

“We will have agents posing as children online to chat with molesters. We can set up a meeting and nab them,” she said.

She said the law enforcers learned during the course that certain online communications could be used as evidence in cases against perpetrators.

In the case of websites featuring child pornography, Chief Superintendent Rodolfo Mendoza said the DIDM would use “computer forensics” to track down the operators of the website.

Incidents of online pornography involving women and children have been on the rise, Mendoza said.

Websites are proliferating in middle-class and slum areas because computers are now affordable and easy to set up to go online, according to him.

Ruben Rodriguez of the ICMEC described the campaign to stamp out child pornography as a global concern.

“There are officers around the world pursuing these offenders. They are conducting sting operations all over,” he said.

Rodriguez said local law enforcement needed to set its priorities right.

“It’s not that you don’t have the commitment. It’s more of what direction you want to take. What are the priorities and how much resources are you willing to put in? Fighting cybercrime is very resource-intensive,” Rodriguez said.

Philippine law enforcement also needed to keep abreast with new technology, he said.

“The Internet is evolving. What you learn today is passé in six months. To fight cyber crimes, you need a team of dedicated people who specialize in investigating these kinds of crimes,” Rodriguez said.

RP ranks high on UN e-governance survey

by Pia Lee-Brago - PhilStar

The Philippines ranked 17th among 191 countries in the United Nations' survey of countries utilizing modern technology and innovations to improve public administration, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said yesterday.

A panel at the 7th Global Forum on Reinventing Government at the UN Headquarters in Vienna last Thursday cited the partnerships between the Philippine government and the private sector in monitoring polluters through the Bantay-Usok and Bantay-Kalikasan programs.

The programs were cited by the UN survey as a model of how technology enables citizens to participate actively in governance.
This observation was affirmed in a UN report in 2006 which identified the Philippines as one of the top 25 countries employing technology or e-government tools to the fullest.

The new UN survey ranked the Philippines 17th, sharing the place with Austria, among 191 countries using a web-measure index that assessed the quality of government websites and the level of utilization of information and communications technology (ICT) tools to provide information and establish Internet-based interactive and transactional services.

At the top of the survey were the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, Republic of Korea and Denmark. The Philippines also ranked fourth in e-government readiness among countries in Asia, next only to Singapore, Republic of Korea and Japan.

E-government readiness takes into account the web-measure index and the level of telecommunications infrastructure and human capital development.

The UN survey also cited that the Philippines' integrated portal www.gov.ph is "on a par with the best of the world" and could be considered a good practice."

The survey also pointed out that it is one of the few national sites in the world that offers a wireless access alternative for users, either through Short Message Service, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) or through a Pocket PC section.

The Philippines was also ranked 15th in the e-participation index among countries which provide access and opportunity to the citizen through development of participatory initiatives via ICT.