Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Misallocation of Resources

The popularity of E-Governance in the Philippines has truly been an interesting subject. I mean, for a third world country like ours to focus so much on providing government services through the internet is quite flabbergasting. We could invest our resources in the rehabilitation of our infrastructures or for the revival of the Philippine agricultural sector in order to jumpstart our economy to meet global competition… but our government is more attracted to providing internet access to remote regions. Seriously… isn’t that the private sector’s business?


The Philippines has approximately 14 million Internet users (about 15.1% of the entire population). How many of those individuals actually use the Internet for constructive purposes aside from Facebook or pornography?


I am a bit piqued that we are needlessly misallocating our limited resources for projects that are uneconomical for the present needs of society. There are more urgent issues that must be addressed before the government attempts to “bridge the digital divide” with regard to governmental services. If the government could only focus on other pressing matters (such as education and the economy), maybe the traditional systems of governance would be more than sufficient to meet the needs of society.

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