Reports of people lining up outside of government offices even before the break of dawn—like what happened at the Social Security System (SSS) branch in Diliman, Quezon City—has made Partido Reporma standard-bearer Ping Lacson more passionate about pushing for digitalization.
Photos uploaded by a national daily on its official social media pages, showing people sleeping on cardboards and camping outside the SSS branch office along East Avenue as early as Thursday evening to claim various benefits by Friday, are scenes that Lacson wants to avoid under his administration.
For the presidential aspirant, this kind of lengths that ordinary Filipinos have to go to just to feel the services of government could be resolved if we are going to have a leadership that will seriously invest on a digital infrastructure aimed at streamlining basic public services including those provided by SSS.
Lacson has long been advocating for the digitalization of government transactions not only as a way to curb corruption at various agencies but to ease the processes for our countrymen, especially the senior citizens and persons with disabilities.
The Partido Reporma chief will try to achieve this goal by allocating P18-billion for the National Broadband Program of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) once he receives the people’s mandate following the May 9, 2022 elections.
“We need to strengthen the digitalization of government processes by pouring in the resources needed for the automation and interoperability of government agencies,” according to Lacson.
Meanwhile, skills-matching should take precedence over civil service eligibility when the government needs workers, Lacson said, as he has appealed to the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to relax its requirements for new college graduates who want to enter public service.
Lacson revealed this following a dialogue with voters in Daet, Camarines Norte during his campaign sortie there with running mate Vicente “Tito” Sotto III and Partido Reporma’s senatorial candidates.
This also dovetails with the three-term senator’s belief that not all who pass a civil service exam have the ability and skills that are apt for the needs of the government position they are seeking.
No one should be denied a chance to get employed, especially with so many Filipinos losing jobs amid the global coronavirus pandemic, Lacson said. But he also encouraged those who haven’t taken a licensure exam to do so, with the government lowering COVID-19 restrictions to Alert Level 1 or the “new normal.”
A new graduate, Michael John Balang of San Lorenzo Ruiz, posed this question to the longtime public servant, as the young man said he could not get a job even with his fresh college degree in Agriculture.
In his recent campaign sorties with Sotto and the senatorial candidates under their slate, Lacson always included his digitalization program among his primary advocacies in his 2022 presidential bid.
Connected to this agenda is the improvement of internet and mobile telecommunication services in the country. A Lacson-Sotto administration would also ensure that these services will be accessible even in remote areas, so people won’t have to travel far just to transact business with government.
Under a digitalized environment, Lacson envisions a government agency less prone to corruption and more responsive to the needs and priorities of citizens relying on its services that will be delivered more efficiently.
Lacson also mentioned earlier that pushing for these technological solutions will help his administration promote social justice, especially for the working-class Filipinos, who always have a hard time fighting for a living wage and accessing the benefits promised to them by their employers.
“I haven’t passed (the board examinations) for my license. So now, we who have not passed find it hard, sir, to get a job, because if we are not ‘legitimate’ graduate students, we have a difficult time entering the government workforce,” Balang said.
Lacson said he understood that many dreams were dashed for new graduates, especially during the two-year COVID-19 pandemic, owing to the limitations of public lockdowns and minimum health standards.
In fact, the government has only recently resumed the conduct of licensure examinations for various fields, hence many college-age students like Balang have not taken any exams that would qualify them for a license to enter government service.
“We are talking to the Civil Service Commission and we are requesting that they do not tighten or seek licenses (for those who want) to enter the government. They said they would study it,” Lacson told Balang.
“To us, more important is what’s called ‘skills matching.’ Because you may have passed a licensure (exam), but your skill is not apt for the opening (at a government agency). They should look for those who didn’t pass but have the right skills for the position of need in the government,” the presidential bet added.