letter to ComputerWorld Philippines
February 12, 2005Here’s a letter I sent to Lawerence Casiraya of Computerworld Philippines. It’s a reaction to a CICT statement - that essentially says
1) that Govt will redelegate PH (eg - take control of the PH Domain)
2) CICT Commissioner Ver Pena justifies his reasons for the Guidelines - to make the PH Domain more efficient and independent.
3) Just in case the Government is unable to redelegate - he’s creating a Technical Working Group to discuss the implementation of the Guidelines with DotPH.
(3) is an interesting admission, I might add, because I believe Mr. Pena was operating under the assumption that he could redelegate PH at will - hence the guidelines were created in relative secrecy (we weren’t invited to meet with the Advisory Board), and the guidelines have ended been pretty much one-sided .
Hopefully we’ll be seeing a thaw in these hardline positions?
=====
Regarding the CICT statement:
I’m glad that Mr. Pena has finally given us his justification for taking control of the Domain Registry - he says it is for an efficient and independent administration of the .PH domain. Well, we’re all for efficiency and independence! For well over a year we have been asking Secretary Pena to identify problems so that we can work together to fix them . Instead of answering, his response has been to impose these Guidelines. It is difficult to understand how Mr. Pena intends to make our operations more efficient if he can’t identify where the inefficiency is in the first place. Perhaps he would care to elaborate?
And the Guidelines actually make the administration of the PH domain completely dependent on the government. Mr. Pena insists on having the right to create new guidelines at will. This will kill the PH domain’s ability to compete against foreign domains like COM, NET and INFO. There will be no incentive to develop technology and infrastructure, or do any long-term planning, when the franchise can be arbitrarily terminated — as Secretary Pena is attempting to do right now.
We’ve invested a lot of time and energy in making the PH domain easy to register, manage and use. Our systems are world-class. Technology which we developed for the local market is currently being used with great success in New Zealand and will soon be exported to other countries as well. We were one of the first countries in the world to introduce a Shared Registry System. We have well over 200 Registrars - almost as many as ICANN has accredited. We were one of the first countries to initiate a dispute resolution system. Its hard to see how the government could improve on what we’re doing, but we are willing to work with them. The thing though is to first identify the areas that need improvement. Then can we work together on possible solutions.
>Like I was asking you, did Joel (or DotPH for that matter) issue a
>decision about the matter? From how i understand, based on the guidelines,
>you have to choose between remaining as “administrator” or becoming a
>”registry”.
There is a serious problem with the “choice” that is being forced on us. The Administrator is neither the Registry nor the Registrar. It never has been, and never will be! The “choice” is based on wrong information and is indicative of how seriously flawed the Guidelines are. For Mr. Pena to keep insisting that we make a “choice”, despite the fact that such a choice is impossible, is a dangerous sign of inflexibility.
The Guidelines also have onerous provisions that make them completely one-sided. For example, the government can impose new rules at any point in the future (Guidelines Art. XI, Sec. 6 and Art. XIII, Sec. 4). Whoever heard of an agreement where one party can change the terms at will, and the other has no choice but to accept? Also, any doubts about the interpretation of the Guidelines are immediately resolved in favor of the government (see Guidelines Art XIII, Sec. 1). It’s not what I would a fair agreement.
I think that the best way to proceed is for Mr. Pena to stop insisting that we agree to the Guidelines - seeing as how they are onerous and seriously flawed. If he can do this and just list the inefficiencies he wishes us to correct - then we can be well on our way to making the PH Domain as efficient as he envisions.
Previous Comments
What can u say about the things that PC magazainePhils printed that you should not be making it a business if you are given the HONOR of taking care of the administration of ccTLD's??
Next is, in some of the threads, u said that dotPH does not have a lot of customers..How can you attract clients and compete with other domains if ur pricing scheme is A LOT more than other domains offer in a year????
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Quoting from the Computerworld article:
The CICT recently formed a technical working group (TWG) that will oversee the implementation of the new guidelines. Damian Domingo “Dondi” Mapa, CICT commissioner for business development, was tasked to lead the group.
“The first task of the TWG is to initiate procedures for the redelegation of the .ph domain name pursuant to Section 7, Article XII (of the Guidelines in the Administration of the .PH Domain Name),” Mapa said in a recent statement issued by the CICT.
…
The technical working group will discuss the issue of redelegation when it holds its first meeting this week. The group includes representatives from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), National Computer Center (NCC), and Telecommunications Office (TelOf) as members. The technical working group will also represent the CICT in discussions with DotPH on various issues that have been raised regarding the guidelines.
Having been a part of the bureaucracy for a number of years now, I’m of the idea that government won’t survive without two things: committees and meetings. There always seem to be endless discussions by various committees on how to go about with doing things, but many times without proper resolution of issues, and many times without adequate action. If at all, any resolution or action would not come in a very timely manner.
CICT’s forming of a TWG would be perhaps the expected action for an agency that is, at this point, unable to adequately address by iteslf the concerns it is facing. On one hand, the TWG would indeed constitute due diligence on the part of Government, given different inputs and perspectives (from the various member agencies). However, it would be prudent for CICT to also include representatives from the other stakeholders, such as the private sector (dotPH in this case, as well as other reps from the ICT industry), and as well open the discussions for observation by the public. Otherwise, the TWG would have a one-sided perspective, skewed towards CICT’s views.
However, on the other hand, a TWG or any Committee, for that matter, would also be cause for inefficiency on the part of Government. Protracted discussions, unneessarily long meetings, scheduling problems–these are all normal hindrances to an effective consensus-building activity. And this is especially so if some of the TWG member agencies are known to be not very forward-looking in its activities and mandate (i.e. preventing innovation in the ICT industry may be self-serving to a certain government entity mentioned to be part of the TWG).
Looks like certain people need to be more open-minded, IMHO.
Angelo
Posted by jangelo at February 15, 2005, 8:26 am