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INNOVATIVE SUPREME COURT PROGRAMS Although there is supposed to be a strict separation of powers between the Judicial Branch and the Executive Branch, it does not hurt to have a healthy cooperation between the two branches, if it is for the good of society in general, and especially if it is for humanitarian reasons. I can only cite three examples because these are the only ones that I know about, but my readers are welcome to add more information if you have more examples. When I was the Director General and Undersecretary of the National Computer Center (NCC), I implemented the National Crime Information System (NCIS), a project that involved several agencies of the Executive Branch, including PNP, BJMP, NBI, DILG, DOJ and  BUCOR, among many others. Since the project was designed to be a joint cooperation between and among the five pillars of justice, it was necessary to include the Supreme Court. As far as I can recall, there was a certain unwillingness on the part of the Suprem...

MEASURING STUDENT PERFORMANCE Why does it always come as a surprise to us whenever the Philippines scores low in the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) rating system of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)? Is there no way of tracking, monitoring and reporting the performance of students nationwide, such that we will no longer be surprised whenever the PISA ratings would come out? In the latest PISA ratings, the Philippines ranked number five from the bottom with a score of 353 among a field of 81 participating countries and economies. The topnotcher is Singapore with 560 points, followed by Macau with 535 points, Taiwan with 533 points, Japan with 533 points and South Korea with 523 points. Come to think of it, Macau is not even a country, but how did they manage to score so high? To answer my own question, yes, there are software that are available for the purposes of of tracking, monitoring and reporting the performance of students . ...

WHY DOES IT TAKE ELEVEN YEARS TO BECOME AN ARCHITECT? Is anyone in the two houses of the Congress monitoring and keeping track of the overall impact of several laws as these are passed over the years? Is anyone evaluating whether the overall impact is good or bad for the country in the long run? Or is the Congress passing laws without what short term or long term impacts it will have on the lives of the citizens whom they are supposed to serve? For example, is any past or present member of the House or the Senate aware that it now takes a total of 11 years before a graduate of junior high school becomes a licensed architect? What that means that anyone who graduates from junior high school at the age of 16 will already be 27 years old before he or she is fully licensed to practice as an architect.  To understand what I mean, 2 years of senior high school plus 5 years studying architecture in college plus 2 years of apprenticeship plus 1 year of review plus 1 year of waiting for the...

CATCHING UP WITH THE HOUSING BACKLOG It appears that the government is doing its best to catch up with the housing backlog of about 6.5 million housing units, that is according to their own estimates. But how was the government able to come up with that estimate? Did they base it on actual market demand, by computing the total number of people who could probably afford to buy new houses or condominiums? Or did they base it on the estimated number of people who are homeless? If it is the case of the latter, what then is the government's definition of homelessness? Are they defining it as the total number of people who do not own homes? Meaning that those who are now renting are technically considered as homeless? Or are they defining homelessness as not having a place to call home, regardless of whether it is rented or owned? If that is the definition, does the government have a criterion of what could be considered as an acceptable home? In all probability, the building code is not...

COOPERATIVE FRANCHISING Many years ago, I came up with an idea about cooperative franchising. My idea at that time was to create a coop that could buy a franchise from one of the leading fastfood franchises. Unfortunately, I did not get a favorable response when I wrote that company, because they said that they are not doing business with coops, at least at that time. Well, the situation has apparently changed since then, because the franchisors appear to be more open to the idea now, and there are many coops now that have grown to a size that would already give them some clout. Fast forward to today, my idea now is not to form a new coop for this purpose. Instead, I will just encourage the bigger coops to invest in a franchise, in much the same way that they are already investing in other types of businesses. From the perspective of the franchisor, there is not much difference to them if they sell a franchise to a coop or to a corporation, as long as the location is good, and the mone...

SMALL HARVESTS INTEGRATED PROMOTION SYSTEM Many rural farmers are producing small amounts of assorted crops that are not plentiful enough to meet the volume requirements of traders and buyers. Of course, these rural farmers could cook these crops for their own home consumption, but more often than not, there is still a surplus that they could neither consume nor sell. This is also a problem for urban gardeners, who almost always would end up with a surplus that they could neither eat nor sell. In the case of the rural farmers, there is a possibility that some traders who are acting as consolidators would be interested in buying their surplus crops no matter how small the volumes are, for as long as the consolidators could buy the other volumes of the same crops that are harvested by other rural farmers in the same general area. That is assuming of course that the consolidators would know where to look, and who to contact. That is the reason why a Small Harvests Integrated Promotion Sys...

 DISASTER RISKS AND EMERGENCY ALERTS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM It is common knowledge that internet signals are weak in many parts of the Philippines. In spite of that problem however, many barangays are relying on the internet to send and receive messages that would enable them to respond to disaster risks and many other emergency situations. Obviously, that is a very dangerous proposition, because if the internet signals are down, then these barangays would be cut off from the rest of the country, and therefore, they could not be contacted. In the technology field, there is nothing wrong with using high tech solutions, but we should also continue using low tech solutions for as long as these are still available, and especially if these are actually affordable. By comparison, it would be safe to assume that the combination of the three mobile networks in the Philippines would have a wider coverage than that of all the internet networks combined. That is the reason why I believe that a Dis...

ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS I am happy to announce that in cooperation with Sancy Solutions Philippines, I am now able to provide a free Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software for all doctors, regardless of whether they are working in hospitals or they are working on their own as private practitioners. It also does not matter whether they are working for private hospitals or public hospitals, because they could both avail of my free EMR offer. As it is now, EMR software is being sold to doctors, clinics and hospitals either as a license or as a service, often at very expensive prices that are beyond the reach of individual doctors, especially those who are just starting their own practice. Without an EMR software, doctors are forced to resort to manual records only, that are handwritten on sheets of paper and filed in paper folders. As a result, the information in these folders are often inaccessible to the doctors, especially when they move from one clinic to another. Data portabili...

THE MATHEMATICS OF SUPPLYING WATER In an interview about how to provide more water to meet the growing national demand, one DPWH official said that they will look into deep well solutions. Either that official is out of tune or out of touch, but either way, it gives us an idea that many of our government officials do not really know what to do or what they are doing, probably because they are like square pegs in round holes. Maybe that DPWH official does not know that it is already illegal to draw water from deep wells in many parts of the country, and wherever that is still allowed, the water may already be contaminated, or may have already reached salinity levels that would make it already unfit for human consumption. Notwithstanding that DPWH official's apparent ignorance about the realities of the water problem, it appears that no one in the government is really looking at the projected demand for water in the future, as well as the projected supply, based on what are doable an...

WHO ARE QUALIFIED TO RECEIVE FREE FARM EQUIPMENT? I would like to know who are qualified to receive free farm equipment from the government. Are these individual farmers? Or farmer associations? Or producer cooperatives? What are the requirements that are needed in order to qualify for this program? How are the beneficiaries chosen?  It is good to see that the DA is implementing this program to help our farmers, but it would be good if we could learn more about this initiative, other than what we saw in the news about President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. distributing them. If these background information kits are available from the DA, they should release it already to the public. As it was announced, the DA distributed compact rice mills with polishers, rice harvesters, corn shellers and hand tractors in one Bicol municipality. But how was that municipality chosen? What about all the other municipalities all over the country? How could they avail of the program? As far as I know, th...

 MOBILE GOVERNANCE USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE My business partner Jaynie Labay, has built a new Filipino oriented social networking platform (SNP), and she is calling it the Mobile Governance Platform, or MGOV for short. It would not be correct to call it the first Filipino SNP, because there are many other SNPs that are already in the market. However, it would probably be correct for her to claim that it is the first SNP to target all the mobile users in the Philippines with the goal of offering them all the public oriented services that they would possibly need. At first I thought that she was developing a government app, meaning an app that could service all government transactions, but I eventually realized that it was more than a goverment app, because it could also service many other requirements of mobile users, whenever they want to transact or do business with private sector companies. In other words, it is now a multisectoral app, if we could call it that. I also thoug...

THE RETURN OF THE GOLDEN TARA TO THE PHILIPPINES I recently received a photocopy of a letter dated 25 January 1922 that was sent by the Agusan Coconut Company to Mr. H. Otley Beyer of the University of the Philippines. The photocopy was sent by Dr. Potenciano Malvar of Butuan City, through my brother, architect and town planner Rey Seneres who is also from Butuan City. The letter talks about the possibility of getting back the image of the Golden Tara from the University of Chicago. The University of the Philippines was mentioned as a possible consignee, but I think that the National Museum or the Bangko Sentral might be in a better position to procure and secure it. That is why I sent letters to the National Museum of the Philippines and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas about this. The following are excerpts from the Wikipedia entries about the image, quoted vervatim in toto: "The Agusan image (commonly referred to in the Philippines as the Golden Tara in allusion to its supposed,...

HOUSES ON STILTS AND HOUSEBOAT DESIGNS In a recent "Future Earth" online forum of the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), the problem of frequent floods and rising sea levels was discussed. During that discussion, it was mentioned that there is already a need for new designs for elevated house on stilts designs, and also floating house boats designs. It was also suggested that the United Architects of the Philippines (UAP) and the Commission of Higher Education (CHED) should be contacted for both of them to provide the solutions. The idea is to encourage architecture and engineering students to plan and implement actual design projects of these housing designs that could be used by the government housing and disaster management agencies, while at the same time get academic credits for their graduation requirements. Perhaps, a design contest could be launched for this purpose, with prizes to be donated by private companies and government agencies. For your infor...

 WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT APPROACH Wikipedia defines th whole-of-government approach as "a concept that refers to the collaboration and coordination of different government agencies and stakeholders to jointly address complex problems or issues. It aims to provide integrated and balanced responses to the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. It is driven by the need to overcome the limitations of siloed public administration and to meet the expectations of citizens for more accessible and personalized public services". Every now and then, we hear from government officials who promise to get things done by way of using the whole-of-government approach. I salute these government officials, but I also sympathize with them, because I know from my own experience that it is going to be a rough uphill climb for them, and they are going to be met with countless obstacles. Wikipedia hit it on the nail when it said that the government is siloed, because t...

 PRIVATE WI-FI SERVICE PROJECT I am making plans to help cooperatives all over the country to go into the business of becoming an Internet Service Provider (ISP) within the vicinity of their coop owned stores or offices. The objctive of the project is to make WI-FI signals available within their immediate vicinities, but it is possible to extend the WI-FI signals to a broader area by installing more access points (APs). The key to the success of the project is a billing system that will enable the coop stores or offices to sell passwords to their own members, for them to access the internet. Those who are not members could also pay for their temporary passwords using cash or credit cards. Although the selling price to the members and the non-members will be the same, the members will be able to avail of discounts, rebates and also annual dividends. This project will be applicable to all types of coops, such as producer coops, consumer coops, electric coops, transport coops and mult...