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TO HELP create a winning Internet strategy for the country, the Philippine information technology industry needs to come up with a "compelling story" for government policymakers.

This was stated by Trade Secretary Manuel Roxas II at the first strategy conference of the E-Commerce Council on April 13. After being appointed to head the Department of Trade and Industry, Roxas gathered key IT decision makers from the government and private sector to form the ECC, which is supposed to create and implement the Internet Strategy for Philippines.com, or ISP.com.

"All these things (the different areas tackled at the conference) have to be tied up to one coherent story. We must weave these individual to-do lists into one whole cloth. It must be as compelling as the housing or agricultural stories," Roxas said.

The first strategy conference for this ambitious project took hours to finish, as the different subcommittees presented an overview of their respective sectors and securing inputs from the delegates, most of whom came from the private sector.

The composition of the convenors for the different subcommittees attests to the leading role that the private sector is taking in the ECC. Augusto Lagman, chair and CEO of Systems Standards Inc. is the convenor for manpower development; Mosaic Communications Inc. president William Torres, market niche; Intel Microelectronics country manager Ricardo Banaag and Presidential Adviser for Information Technology and Communications Jovencio Kintanar, physical infrastructure and technology; Dfnn.com president Ramon Garcia Jr., financial infrastructure, and Great Wall Advertising president Rey Anthony David, communication program.

"You must understand that for policymakers and government regulators, it's very important that they have something to hold on to," Roxas said. "It's important for the (IT) industry to develop a scenario. With respect to e-commerce and IT, it's so new that there's really no roadmap and so it's difficult for legislators to understand--not because they are any less intelligent but because it is hard to visualize right now. That makes it difficult for them to allocate resources and their interest when so many other constituencies are competing for attention."

While the Senate version of the electronic commerce bill or Senate Bill No. 1902 has passed third and final reading on Tuesday, the counterpart bill in the House of Representatives is still stalled. In an earlier interview, Kintanar had warned that time was running out for the passage of a Philippine e-commerce law as after July Congress would start tackling the budget while next year would already be election season. At the Internet strategy conference, Kintanar proposed the formation of a lobbying group for the immediate passage of the e-commerce bill in the Lower House.

Apart from the time-consuming process for creating action plans and passing relevant laws, one of the problems of IT policymaking in the Philippines is the history of aborted initiatives and projects. Once the ISP.com is drawn up and implemented, how can the country ensure a consistent, institutionalized policy? How can the policymakers ensure that the country's IT strategy would not be scrapped every time there is a change in administration or in the people spearheading projects?

"I think it's the strength of the story," Roxas said. "The strength of the story will serve to protect it. It's not going to be a question of whether it's important or not, but how it fits into the story."

Somewhat ironically, the fast pace of change in technology is in stark contrast to the slow, tedious process of gathering policymakers together, getting all the inputs and fitting these into a feasible plan.

"Brainstorming takes time. You can't rush it. You need to get the people to talk," said Makati Business Club executive director and Knowledge Institute managing director Guillermo Luz. Luz is part of the ECC secretariat.

He, however, said that they need to come up with the drafts to submit to Roxas in time for the IT trade mission on May 3. "Maybe not the draft that we can show to the public, but to give him at least some talking points."

Getting government and the private sector talking about IT, however, is one thing but Roxas stressed that the clamoring voices for IT's prioritization should tell a common, compelling story.

"Put it this way: if the semiconductor industry needed all these things, then they would get it right away," he said, pointing out that this sector already has a proven track record as a top export earner and source of jobs for many Filipinos. "There's no such story yet for IT and e-commerce."