Saturday, September 06, 2008 Sumog-oy: Gensan's computer literacy program By Ben Sumog-oy Issues and views
(First Part)
WHILE, strictly put, it is just program, the General Santos City's Sheep-CLP (Sheep is an acronym for the city's major development thrusts which we will later spell out, while CLP stands for Computer Literacy Program) operates as a virtual division under the City Mayor's Office (CMO).
Operating under the auspices of Mayor Pedro B. Acharon Jr., this program is considered a virtual division under the CMO due to the existence of its own organizational structure, with clearly defined functions and hierarchical responsibilities.
Correspondingly, it has a staffing pattern -- with required qualification standards (QS) for each and every position found therein -- which is now occupied by chosen technical persons and information technology (IT) experts.
Currently, Sheep-CLP, while lacking in usual sensationalism innate to many local service departments, remains to be a largely obscure office but its role in the pursuit of the city's development strategies (CDS) and for the charting of its destiny, if subjected to deeper examination, cannot be discounted.
Such a role, as we shall delve later, is actually of monumental significance to the future of the city and its people.
Sheep-CLP had only a total of five staff members, with Percival Pasuelo, Norda Celebrado, and Gertrudes Bartolaba at the helm, when it was created in 1999.
Notably, a year before that, former mayor and congressman Adelbert W. Antonino dramatically recaptured the highest local political seat when he finally defeated his then strongest political archrival after a highly sensational power seesaw that had characterized the city's political landscape for almost two decades.
Therefore, when Sheep-CLP was finally birthed in 1999, Adel Antonino was actually serving his second term as city mayor.
As always, institutions created for a purely public purpose have their own elemental subjectivity. Consequently, this is also true with Sheep-CLP.
Adel Antonino, regarded as a computer wizard long before computerization was first introduced in the city in the early '90s, had IT then as one of his major fields of interests.
That Adel Antonino's near-obsession on IT at that time had helped propel the establishment of Sheep-CLP in the city is a contention that we do not consider as one that betrays logic.
Today, with Mayor Jun Acharon serving his third and last term as mayor, Sheep-CLP is now composed of 25 staff members working under the direction of Amelia Barroga, the new program supervisor.
In addition, the program has already a manifold of office infrastructures put under its control. Together with the growth and development of its physical and human resource infrastructures, Sheep-CLP has vastly expanded its mandated functions and its role in the pursuit of the city's development agenda.
Also, in 1999, Sheep-CLP started as an office that merely worked to help develop and sharpen the IT skills of different offices within the city's bureaucracy; including the IT skills of its development partners which are basically government mandated or recognized institutions and civil society organizations.
Later on, however, Sheep-CLP expanded its mandate, this time, to serve the interest and welfare of the bigger society by conducting regular computer classes among students and pupils in public secondary and elementary schools (the social significance of this is discussed in the theoretical portion of this work).
Aside from conducting computer trainings for the present crop of city government functionaries, Sheep-CLP is also involved in initiating Computer Literacy Tests (CLT) for job aspirants.
The CLT is given before a work applicant for any position in the city undergoes so-called Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) examinations.
These examinations are usually conducted by the Human Resource and Management Development Office (HRMDO) under Sarah T. Sanchez.
In the pursuit of its bigger role, Sheep-CLP is, at first, commissioned to transfer technologies in computer operations to students/pupils of public secondary and elementary schools (The reason for this we will elucidate later on) by training public school teachers who would, in turn, hone the computer skills of their students or pupils.
But it was later found out that this scheme is not wholly effective. The local branch of the Department of Education Culture and Sports (DECS) has simply not enough personnel to satisfy the human resource requirement of the program. (To be continued)
