POVERTY ERADICATION

BANTAY GOBYERNO SERIES 036
By Ike Señeres 09/24/2010

POVERTY ERADICATION

I used to think that it is impossible to eradicate poverty, because it is a problem that has always been with humankind, even during the biblical times. Recently however, I realized that there is a way to remove or eradicate poverty in the micro level, and allow me to share my thoughts with you on this subject.

Poverty is an economic concept wherein all those belonging to a household that could not afford the imaginary basket of goods are considered poor or are below the poverty line. While that method of measuring poverty may still be valid technically speaking, there is yet another technicality in dissecting the difference between affordability and accessibility.

Naïve as it may seem, I would dare to say that if household members could be given access to the contents of the imaginary basket of goods, by way of reduced prices or extended payment terms, then they would be able to avail of the values of these goods, even if they are still technically poor. This analysis is of course based on the assumption that they would have the means or the mechanisms to avail of these goods.

Goods that are produced by private corporations are necessarily priced high, because they have to cover their high costs of production, distribution and marketing, citing just a few expense areas. Conversely however, goods that are produced by public cooperatives could be priced lower, because their costs could be lower in a controlled micro economy.

Assuming that the goods produced by public cooperatives could be priced lower, it would then follow that the household members would be able to afford what are in the imaginary basket of goods, in effect placing them above the poverty line. This would be difficult to do in an open market macro economy, but it appears to be doable in a closed micro economy.

In a manner of speaking, the household members in a self-contained community that is producing their own goods and services would actually in effect belong to a closed micro economy, because they will be buying the goods and services that they are also producing through their own public cooperatives. The term “public” applies here, because the cooperative shares are available for anyone to buy.

The key words in this discussion are “closed” and “self-contained”, and because of this, it would appear that the ideal locations to pilot this approach are the ancestral domains where the tribal members would be able to organize themselves into public cooperatives. For practical reasons, they need a functional cooperative structure that would complement but not compete with their existing tribal structure.

To meet the criterion of being self-contained, a location has to be small enough to be manageable. In theory, the barangay is supposed to be the smallest unit of governance, but in reality, many barangay units are too big to be manageable. The solution to this limitation perhaps is to scale down the size to the smaller unit of a zone within a barangay. This zonal approach could work in both urban and rural settings.

“Rethinking” is the buzz word in the development circles today. Perhaps we have no choice right now except to stick to the conventional method of measuring the poverty rate, but if we do not rethink the challenge of eradicating poverty, this problem will not disappear. Obvious as it may seem, the apparent solution is to make the goods in the imaginary basket reachable or accessible as the case may be, so that more households will be able to afford it.

Access to clean and potable water is a good example of explaining this concept. In many locations today, there is no access to clean water, and that is why the people in these locations have to spend for bottled water. To solve this, a local zone could put up a cooperative that will function as the water utility, providing filtered tap water to their members.

The cooperative approach has a democratizing effect in the sense that anyone could join. The approach enables members to earn from their own consumption by way of rebates and dividends. By enabling cooperatives to grow, members are not only able to afford the lower priced goods; they also earn more money that will give them more access to these goods.

Watch KA IKING LIVE! Saturdays 8 pm to 9 pm in Global News Network (GNN), Channel 21 in Destiny Cable. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings. Visit www.senseneres.blogspot.com

ADOPTION OF THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX

BANTAY GOBYERNO SERIES 035
By Ike Señeres 09/16/2010

ADOPTION OF THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary composite index that measures a country's average achievements in three basic aspects of human development: health, knowledge, and a decent standard of living. Health is measured by life expectancy at birth; knowledge is measured by a combination of the adult literacy rate and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrolment ratio; and standard of living by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita (Source: United Nations).

As used by the United Nations, the statistic of life expectancy at birth is just another way of measuring the mortality rate of a country. In a similar manner, the statistic of knowledge is just another way of measuring the illiteracy rate of the country, and the statistic of the standard of living is just another way of measuring the poverty rate of a country.

I see the need to standardize the adoption of the HDI method for our country as a whole. As a member of the United Nations, our government is already using HDI as a national measure. However, it is still not the practice of the Local Government Units (LGUs) to adopt HDI as the common method of measuring human development at the local level. Strictly speaking, the national HDI data should be derived from the actual data that is collected from the LGU level.

The HDI method does not directly use the poverty rate to measure the standard of living of a country. It uses instead the statistic of the GDP per capita, using the purchasing power parity (PPP) method of computation. PPP is a theory of long-term equilibrium exchange rates based on relative price levels of two countries (Source: Wikipedia). Setting aside the technical jargon however, the fact remains that our country has a very high poverty rate, meaning that the standard of living of the majority of our people is very low.

Right now, the Philippines ranks number 105 in the 2009 HDI Report of the United Nations Development Program, under the classification of “Medium Human Development”. On the positive side however, the Philippines ranks number 36 in the 2009 GDP-PPP list of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

I believe that our right approach should be to improve our adult literacy rate by increasing access to educational and professional services, to improve our standard of living by increasing access to legal and commercial services and to improve our life expectancy by increasing access to medical and dental services. I have named this the Educational, Legal and Medical approach, or the ELM approach for short.

As it is now, our country has a very high adult literacy rate already. On the negative side however, we have a very low gross enrolment ratio, which in the final computation effectively lowers our national measure of knowledge. I believe that the solution to this is to increase our gross enrolment ratio through alternative learning approaches.

Moreover, I believe that the our official standard for our national measure of knowledge should be raised from the basic “read and write” measure, to a more specific measure of graduating from a vocational or a professional course, so that our individual citizens could become more competitive in the global marketplace.

In my prior articles, I wrote that livelihood is the solution to poverty. I still believe in that, but under the ELM approach, I am now giving a new focus to the provision of legal services as a way to break down the barriers that are now making it difficult for our individual citizens to improve their standard of living. This could include barriers to productive employment or to owning a business, hence the emphasis on commercial services. It is good to note that many organizations are sponsoring free medical and dental clinics, and this should be encouraged, but we do need more free legal clinics too.

In a manner of speaking, the race to get higher HDI and GDP scores is like a battle among nations that should be given more importance than the World Cup and the Olympics. All of our national energies should be focused on these two priority goals, and the best place to start is putting good order into our implementation at the local level.

Watch KA IKING LIVE! Saturdays 8 pm to 9 pm in Global News Network (GNN), Channel 21 in Destiny Cable. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings. Visit www.senseneres.blogspot.com

INSTITUTION BUILDING

BANTAY GOBYERNO SERIES 2010034
By Ike Señeres September 13

INSTITUTION BUILDING

Together with some friends, I started the Corinthian Coffee Club (C3) that now meets every Friday afternoon at the Elks Club located at the Corinthian Plaza in Makati City. From the very start, we wanted it to be an informal gathering of Filipinos and foreigners who are committed to the advocacy of nation building. Originally, we wanted C3 to be simply a forum for the exchange of ideas between the proponents of nation building initiatives, and those who may be in a position to support these initiatives, particularly among the business chambers that are represented by their members.

After two months of successful meetings however, many of the members want C3 to be more than just a forum for the exchange of ideas, they now want it to be an active proponent of, and a participant in actual nation building programs and projects. In other words, they do not want to simply talk, they now want to walk the talk. At first I thought that this change in direction would be in conflict with our original purpose, but after a period of discernment, I have found a practical approach that would solve our dilemma. Rather than talk about nation building in general, our practical approach now is to lead in institution building.

After more than one hundred years of being an independent country, it would be reasonable to think that by now, we would already have very strong institutions at the local and national levels, each institution serving its own purpose for the good of the nation. Unfortunately however, instead of growing in strength, we have seen many of our institutions either getting weakened or destroyed, partly due to political reasons. The sad part is, political factors might have also prevented the establishment of some basic institutions that are now absent from the national picture.

Everyone is now talking and complaining about the failure of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to properly handle the hostage incident in Manila. After all the talking subsides, would it not be good to have permanent solutions that would prevent the problem from happening again? Just to use it as an example, the PNP is an institution that should have been built and strengthened in the first place to deal with all public safety tasks such as handling hostage situations. It is not too late to help them do it now.
If we really want our country to take its place in the global community of developed nations, we should look at the institutions that the other countries have built, and thereafter, we should make it our national goal to build these institutions in our country as an initial step, at the same time go towards the direction of strengthening and sustaining these institutions in the long run.

What could these institutions be? These could probably vary in form or character, but it would be correct to say that any facility or organization that serves the public interest in particular and the good of the nation in general could be considered as an institution. In the absence of clear directions as to what to do and where to start, we could start looking at what is obvious around us, in our own local communities.

Yes, look around you and you will see that many institutions are missing from our localities. These are either missing or lacking. If these are present at all, they are probably weak or unstable. More often than not however, we only notice the weaknesses when something bad happens. Just like what happened in the hostage incident.

To cite a few more examples, very few localities have orphanages, senior homes, first aid clinics, homeless shelters and dog pounds. Do we really need dog pounds? The answer is yes, if we really are concerned about sanitation and the humane treatment of animals. Do we really need orphanages? The answer is yes, if we really need a more long term to the problem of street children.

Many of those who attend C3 are also members of the United National Integrated Development Alliance (UNIDA). Because of this relationship, it may be practical now to formalize the cooperation of the two groups by making C3 the governing board of the UNIDA on one hand, and by making UNIDA the operating arm of C3 on the other hand.

As a practical direction, C3 could now lead in inviting volunteer consultants who could help national agencies and local governments in building their institutions. As the operating arm of C3, the UNIDA could pick it up from there to assist these volunteers in their actual places of assignment.

Watch KA IKING LIVE! Saturdays 8 pm to 9 pm in Global News Network (GNN), Channel 21 in Destiny Cable. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings. Visit www.senseneres.blogspot.com

REVIVAL OF THE CAREER BUREAUCRACY

BANTAY GOBYERNO SERIES 2010033
By Ike Señeres September 07


REVIVAL OF THE CAREER BUREAUCRACY

Word has it that the new government is having a hard time filling up the vacant positions in the bureaucracy, because of a shortage of qualified candidates. Have they ever stopped to think that there is an existing pool of career professionals that they could immediately tap? Perhaps in the rush to change the “old” appointees with “new” faces, the new government has forgotten that there is a deep bench of deserving potential appointees who are not simply qualified, they have been officially certified to take senior positions after passing rigorous tests and difficult requirements.

I am referring to the pool of professionals who have passed either the Career Service Executive Examination (CSEE) or the Career Executive Service Officer (CESO) examination, or both. The CSEE is a qualification granted by the Civil Service Commission (CSC) in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. The CESO on the other hand is granted by the Career Executive Service Board (CESB) in accordance with the provisions of a Presidential Decree. By comparison, the CSEE is a higher qualification compared to the CESO, but the government seems to have forgotten the difference between the two. A Presidential Decree is practically similar to an Executive Order, but it has the force and effect of a law since it was issued during Martial Law, nevertheless, a qualification created by the law could not be higher than one that is created by the Constitution.

The new government might have won on a platform of change, but that does not mean that it should change what is already provided for in the Constitution. To do that, it would have to go through a constitutional change, but that is apparently not in their agenda now. The platform of change implied that it should go for what is right, but that does not mean that it should ignore what is already right, even if it is already old.

The direction that the new government should be towards what is right, coming from what is wrong, and not towards what is new, coming from what is old. In this context therefore, the goal of the government should be to put up or to bring back what is right, regardless of whether the right thing to do is old or is new.
It is implied in the platform of change that the institutions that were ignored or destroyed by the previous administrations should now be noticed to say the least, or restored, to say the best. To take an inventory, it could be said that many institutions, in fact too many were ignored or destroyed by the previous administrations, but for purposes of this discussion, let us just say that the institution of the career bureaucracy should be given the topmost attention, because the career people in the bureaucracy are supposed to be the lifeblood of the institutions that they are sworn to serve and preserve, at least that is how it is supposed to be.

As it is supposed to be, based on the Constitution and our system of governance, all government officials starting from the level of the Undersecretaries all the way down to the level of the section chiefs are all supposed to be career officers. Only the Secretary is supposed to be the political appointee, and no one else. In many parliamentary systems, the most senior Undersecretary is appointed as the Permanent Secretary, and the Minister, as the name actually implies, performs only the “ministerial” functions.

Over the years, encompassing many past administrations, it has become the practice to assign political appointees in career positions, from top to bottom, practically “freezing” the career officers in the bureaucracy, bypassing them in fact to a point that they are completely ignored. As a result, we have ended up with officials who have no sense of corporate history on one hand, and have no institutional memory, on the other hand.

As it is supposed to be, Cabinet nominees are not supposed to assume their posts to perform their functions not until they are confirmed by the Commission on Appointments (CA), not even in an “acting” capacity. By allowing this wrong practice to prosper, the Executive Branch is not only ignoring the independent power of the Legislative Branch as an institution, it is also insulting a co-equal counterpart. As an unsolicited advice to the new government, they should make it their profound objective to restore the institution of the career bureaucracy, and not just simply pursue the shallow purpose of filling up vacant positions. A good personnel officer can fill up empty jobs, but it takes a good leader to restore damaged institutions.

Watch KA IKING LIVE! Saturdays 8 pm to 9 pm in Global News Network (GNN), Channel 21 in Destiny Cable. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings. Visit www.senseneres.blogspot.com

HACKING OF GOVERNMENT WEBSITES

BANTAY GOBYERNO SERIES 2010032
By Ike Señeres August 30, 2010


HACKING OF GOVERNMENT WEBSITES

There is no big problem about the issue of government websites being hacked. Most of our government sites are merely information sites, pretty much like newspapers that give out news. There would be a big problem if these sites are interactive and are connected to databases, but most of these government sites are not.

Perhaps this is one case wherein a negative turns out to be a positive. The hackers might have succeeded in breaking into the sites and in defacing them, but there is hardly any sensitive covert information that they could get out of these sites. All the information as far as I know is overt, and there are no secrets to get, really.

It’s a negative, because all government sites are supposed to be interactive in the first place, giving out as much current real time information to all citizens as much as possible. This however comes with a caveat that these sites have to be secure from hacking, complete with firewalls and the whole nine yards.

In the first place, all government sites are supposed to have mirror databases aside from their main databases, so that they could have backups just in case their main sites are compromised. The trick is to have a firewall between the online data and the backend databases, so that these are not vulnerable to outside attacks.

It’s a bad sign that it took longer for the Philippine National Police (PNP) to fix their site, compared to the Philippine Information Agency (PIA). Both sites are now back online, but it is bothersome that the PNP site was hacked in the first place, even if only for symbolic reasons, considering that the PNP is supposed to be highly secure in everything it does.

Hackers crack websites for the same reason that mountaineers climb mountains: because it’s there. The main reason why hackers would do hacking is for bragging rights, whereas mountaineers do not brag at all, they just look for the next mountain to climb.
There is a big difference between a static website and a dynamic website. A static website does not do anything except to post information. A dynamic website is interactive, and it is also transactional. There is no use for an interactive website if it is not transactional. A government website is also useless if it is only static.

In order for a website to be dynamic and transactional, it should have a real time linkage to the backend databases, and that is where the challenge lies, to open these databases to the outside world, but at the same time making sure that these are not vulnerable to attacks from the outside.

It is unlikely that the PIA and the PNP sites were hacked by government agents acting on official orders from the top. Any good Chinese hacker could have done that and that is precisely what it was, a personal attack. The attack however opened our minds to the reality that cyber warfare does exist, and that we are vulnerable to it.

Google has accused the Chinese government of waging cyber attacks against them, but the Chinese have denied this accusation. Is it possible that the Chinese government has a cyber warfare unit that is trained and equipped to stage cyber attacks? The answer is yes, and it is possible that all world powers would already have this capability.

Could an entire country become the target of a cyber attack? The answer is yes, and we have already seen that happen in Bosnia. Could the Philippines defend itself from cyber attacks? The answer is yes, but we have to go back to the basics of defining our national policies for cyber security.

How could we secure our national cyber security infrastructure amidst the reality that most of our major telecom carriers are partially owned by foreign companies? It would be unrealistic to think about keeping them out of our internal security decisions, but this is an issue that we have to resolve.

The issue of establishing our own National Internet Exchange (NIX) has died down, but this is an issue that we have to resurrect. Without an NIX, we could not even talk about securing our own Internet infrastructure.

Watch KA IKING LIVE! Saturdays 8 pm to 9 pm in Global News Network (GNN), Channel 21 in Destiny Cable. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings. Visit www.senseneres.blogspot.com