Digital PH – Finance Dept Urging Digital For LGUs, Why Not ATI Travelling The Information Superhighway?

ANN says Secretary of Finance Carlos G Dominguez says, “We have seen the future and it’s fully electronic” (Author Not Named, 14 Dec 2021, ”Dominguez To LGUs: Boost Revenue Generation Through Digitalization,” DoF.gov.ph). He is minding mining the wealth of data discovered, discussed & displayed:

(Secretary) Dominguez has called on local government units (LGUs) to adopt digital technologies in tax administration and their other business processes in order for them to build their revenue generation and mobilization capabilities under the new normal…

He is saying LGUs can generate much more financing for themselves via electronic means. When they are willing and ready to learn, the DoF will gladly assist them:

(He) assured local executives that the Department of Finance… and its attached agency – the Bureau of Local Government Finance… – are prepared to support their respective LGUs in modernizing and professionalizing the local treasury and assessment service, and in helping them with their digital transition initiatives.

I’ll drink to that! my favorite Nescafé Brown. I am a work from home extension man except in name, starting last year engaged in what I have conceived as communication for village development2021 (CoViD21) – and Mr Dominguez has set me thinking about the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) under new Director Rosana P Mula, ATI being an agency under the Department of Agriculture (DA), which is headed by Secretary of Agriculture William Dar.

Training via ATI has always been radio-based, and now with the information superhighway, knowledge can travel lightning fast. I want to revive Mr Dar’s 2004 Philippine Knowledge Bank proposal when still Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT); he called his brainchild “Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture (OpAPA).” I was an OpAPA consultant, and that is how I found out. ICRISAT is very much alive but, let me put it this way, “OpAPA perished along the information highway itself!”

Now then, let me entice Ms Mula with this thought: With knowledge available anytime on the Internet, knowledge will show incredible power to anyone who taps it and uses it for good, better, best.

Today we can reinvent OpAPA as “ATIn Ito” or “ATI Information Network In Trade Options,” learning materials in crops, livestock & industry available via the Internet, pointing out opportunities and obstacles, inputs to outputs, processes & products, costs & returns.

To explain, below is my brainchild “CoViD21_Information_Highway” scrambled list of crops A to Z, with search results highlighted by different text colors – this is also a convenient analogy in itself of the Knowledge Bank:

garlicavocadobananawaterlilycabbagecarrotcassavamangochayotechicocorncitrusverbenacoconutcoffeecowpeatobaccodurianeggplantgrapejackfruitindigosoybeanzinniajutekapokabacalanzoneslimabeannutmegonionpechayyampotatopomelocacaoquininerambutansantolstrawberryhorseradishsweetpotatotamarindricecaimitotomatomangosteenumbrellapinexiguafig

Searched & automatically unscrambled, among other things, ATIn Ito shows you which crop/s to grow in location/s under which circumstance/s. ATIn Ito is a DA open library to provide information on those crops and their planting, cultivation, irrigation, fertilization, harvesting, postharvest handling, storage, processing products, marketing etc. (The original idea-book I wrote for OpAPA can be a starting point.)

Its website says ATI today is “more committed to (bringing) you extension services beyond boundaries.” Today I add: “Digital is perfect!”@517