Tuesday, September 16, 2008 Sumog-oy: Computer Literary Program By Ben Sumog-oy Issues and views
(Third Part)
TO CONTEXTUALIZE, the city's IT program, under Sheep-CLP, is a built-in component of the Acharon administration's development thrusts, condensed within the acronym "Sheep."
These development thrusts were first formulated and adopted during the second term (1998-2001) of Adel Antonino as city mayor, but were lately revised to tailor-fit to the prevailing social conditions, although the acronym "Sheep" was purposively retained to preserve its roots and its narratives in public memory.
Formerly, Sheep stood for Shelter, Health, Education, Environment and Peace and Order but now Sheep stands for Social Transformation, Human Empowerment, Economic Diversification, Environment Security and Regeneration and Participatory Governance and Transparency.
As we may notice, the city's thrusts have had transmogrified from specifically confined impulsions in 1998 into a vastly expanded areas of development concern at present.
Thus, Sheep, as a development thrust, like any other development experiment, is also involved in narrative building, indicative of its dynamism as a social experiment.
Considering that local development offensives, under the era of globalization, are largely knowledge-based, Sheep-CLP operates, in effect, as an indispensable component of the above-mentioned development thrusts, which are reeling along the city's development strategies (CDS): good governance, competitiveness, bankability and livability.
These development strategies, as we all know, serve as ascending parallel lanes towards the city's vision, which is to build an economically prosperous and globally competitive city inhabited by empowered and healthy people who actively participate in local governance.
While it plays an important role in each of the city's development strategies, Sheep-CLP's main functions is to help make the city globally competitive by preparing its productive forces -- present and future -- in the field of information technology, now considered to be one of the major arenas for global engagement.
During the present era of globalization, expertise in information technology is a potent weapon for massive accumulation of knowledge and an indispensable measure for human excellence.
Thus, those who fail to sharpen their expertise in the field of information technology are sidelined and cannot catch up with the speeding train of modernity. As it is, there is no way that the city could compete globally without expanding its people's knowledge arsenal, especially the one involving information technology.
Let us deepen our analysis of this development thesis. Globalization -- defined as a process of transforming the world into a global village -- is facilitated by modern transportation and sophisticated communication and information technology.
While it hastens closer interactions between and among different nations and cultures, globalization has soaked these same nations and cultures in stern, at times barbaric, competition against each other.
As experience indicates, those that failed or refused to relate with information technologies are defeated, exploited and pitifully sidelined in ignominy.
