Torres, Roxas hailed as ICT champions

WILLIAM TORRES, the president and co-founder of Internet service provider Mosaic Communications (Mozcom), received a special award during the e-Services Philippines global sourcing conference.

Bill, who is fondly known in the Filipino information and communications technology community as the “Grandfather of the Philippine Internet,” was given a special award by the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions for his role as an ICT champion. As you may glean from the “Grandfather of the Philippine Internet” tag, Bill played a key role in bringing the Internet to the Philippines, together with Mozcom co-founder, the late Willy Gan.

Here’s a “firing squad” pic of Bill Torres (center) with Department of Trade and Industry Undersecretary Zorayda Amelia Alonzo (left) and Tunde Fafunwa, chief executive consultant of Bayan Telecommunications, Inc.

Also hailed as an ICT champion and given the CITEM special award was Senator Manuel “Mar” Roxas II. The award cited his role as “lead shepherd” for the development of the contact center and business process outsourcing industry, as well as his “Make IT Philippines” campaign in 2000 during his tenure as DTI chief.

Here’s another press photo, heh. That’s Mar (third from left) with (l-r) DTI Assistant Secretary Felicitas Agoncillo-Reyes, who is the CITEM executive director; DTI Undersecretary Alonzo; Fred Ayala, president of Business Processing Association Philippines; and Michael Alan Hamlin, managing director of TeamAsia, which sent out these photo releases.

As someone who’s been covering the industry for over a decade now, I’ve seen many ICT champions come and go. I remember asking Mar when he was still DTI chief and just starting to focus his attention on ICT what could be done to ensure that IT policy will become an institution instead of depending on the current personality championing it. He agreed that this was one of the usual problems in the government, and said that he would always remain committed to ICT instead of just riding on the popularity of this buzzword.

See, the thing about ICT policy — in fact, government policy in general in this country — is that it can change overnight if the erstwhile champion loses interest, or leaves his or her post, whether voluntarily or not. More often than not, politicians only pay lip service to ICT when it serves their interests.

So it’s good that we have ICT champions and tech evangelists, but we should also realize that we all need to work together to make more Filipinos enjoy the benefits of ICT.

Come to think of it, has there been any serious attempt to organize an ICT party-list? I may be getting old, so if someone could refresh my memory, or tell me why we haven’t been able to do so when all sorts of interest groups have been seeking representation, I’d really appreciate it

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