Industry stakeholders are racing against time to have the proposed laws on Department of ICT (DICT) and cybercrime approved by the Senate before the legislative body officially adjourns a week from now to prepare for the national elections.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed the cybercrime bill on third and final reading. In August last year, the lower chamber also approved the bill creating the DICT.

The proposed laws on cybercrime and DICT, thus, are now only awaiting Senate action before the body formally ends its session under the Arroyo administration.

Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua III, chairman of the Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT), said in his Facebook status update that he is pleased that the cybercrime bill was approved by the House and it’s now “up to the Senate” to do its part.

Last Wednesday, Roxas-Chua reported in his status updates that the cybercrime bill was finally introduced on the Senate floor. The interpellation for the DICT bill, meanwhile, was postponed for next week.

The CICT was created through an executive order in 2004 by President Arroyo. It was meant as merely as transitory body to the DICT.

Worried on the little time left, the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines (NICP) has joined the CICT’s call for the Senate to urgently act on the proposed laws, specifically on the DICT bill.

The NICP, which is composed of 33 regional ICT councils, said in a statement that it “strongly supports the creation of [the DICT]… before the elections.”

The NICP, under the term of its former chair, George Sorio of the Metro Clark ICT Council (MCICTC), last year also called for the approval of Senate Bill 2546 creating the DICT.

In their statement, NICP said any further delay could have a dampening effect on ICT industry’s future growth in the Philippines, especially during the ongoing global recession.

“Positive Senate action will ensure the country’s continued competitive edge in the global market place, and provide social and economic opportunities for the Filipino people,” the group, through its current president Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, said in a statement.

The NICP noted that the IT-BPO sector alone contributed export revenues worth $6 billion in 2008 and created approximately 400,000 job despite the economic turmoil that hit the global economy.

Batapa-Sigue, who is also Bacolod
councilor and chair of the Bacolod-Negros Federation for Information and Communications Technology (BNEFIT), said “the DICT will finally create a permanent entity that cannot be easily modified without the passage of another bill – a permanence advocated by the various ICT councils and organizations in pursuit of a sustained support ICT development in the Philippines.”

“It is time that the clamor for a DICT be heard by the highest lawmaking bodies of this country. Other ASEAN governments heeded the call for an ICT Department or Ministry, and are now closing the gap on our hard-earned and much-valued ICT competitiveness,” she stated.