The Evolution of the Cebu Information Technology

The 'Cebu is IT' experience has been a model for a lot of the parallel initiatives in many growing cities in the country. Being in the middle of the action during the Cebu Information Technology Summit of 2001, I find the succeeding initiatives in these places quite amazing. When I go to different forums I get to be ask the same questions a lot of times. How did we do it? Where there deliberate steps taken to get to where we are? How did we evolve?

We can safely say that we did something right. As to being deliberate in this direction, I'm not quite sure. It's more like toddle through. We did evolve definitely.

Looking back there were noticeable phases or transitions we have to go through to be where we are. However, the state of where we are is not yet our destination. We are really quite a distance from our collective vision. But it will matter a lot if we did look back and see what we went through to be here now!

Selection of a Model for Development 

The National Association of Software and Services Companies or NASSCOM is the premiere trade body and the chamber of commerce of the IT software and services industry in India with about 900 members. The members are into software development, software services and IT-enabled or BPO services. 150 members are global companies from the US, UK, EU, Japan and China.

NASSCOM considers itself the strongest proponent of global free trade in India today. The software sector in India has shown quite a phenomenal growth in the 1990s. To create a plan for the growth of the software industry in the next millennium for India, NASSCOM commissioned a study of existing companies and their IT strategies. NASSCOM commissioned a global management consultancy firm, McKinsey & Company to undertake this study.

McKinsey & Company is a global professional business services organization. It has been providing organizational development and strategic management services to Fortune 1000 global companies for 75 years. Three (3) of the largest global companies are served by McKinsey helping them acquire competitive advantage and leading edge management expertise.

Almost everyone knew from the very start of the Cebu initiatives that India was clearly the model. Most of the literature being circulated all lead to the NASSCOM-McKinsey Report of 1999. This report was publicly released during the "Indian IT Strategy Summit" in December of 1999.

The report outlined a general strategy for the IT sector in which most of the projections in that report have today proven to be right on target.

Research, Study and Synthesis of the Model 

We most definitely did our homework. Different stakeholders had a piece of the NASSCOM model and each had a strategy of the best way to mold it to make it their own. Our chamber of commerce did its role of putting the stakeholders together and introducing the NASSCOM model and the city government got both the local and national agencies to be involved in creating their own synthesis of the NASSCOM model within the sphere of their respective influence.

By year 2000, I have read at least two updates of the same McKinsey Report both have emphasized how well the Indian software and IT service sector were growing beyond projections. 

Informal Discussions and Consensus-building 

You just can't imagine the depth and breadth of the discussions that took place here when the NASSCOM-McKinsey Report finally reach a lot of the stakeholders. 

There were those who would like to clone the Indian experience from the NASSCOM-McKinsey Report right down to the punctuation. Others just didn't feel that it really reflected the kind of development exhibited in Silicon Valley. Still others felt that there has to be another model for Cebu like the Singapore success story if there is such a story.

Even before all these IT initiatives, so many development initiatives where already on the table but none however was as focus as the kind that grew out of the many discussions triggered by the NASSCOM-McKinsey Report. There were a lot of surprising consensus building up.

Many believe that whatever the outcome the IT initiatives have to be started soon. It has to be done and Cebu has to do it on its own. Cebu like always believe that the National Government cannot do it whatever the prodding and even if they did it they almost always do it wrong from the start. 

Buy-in and Adoption of the Model for Development 

There was a lot of talk going around that the whole idea of finding consensus for an IT initiative to drive the Cebu economy was more a political strategy than an economic one.

Whether this is true or not the fact is that the timing of the initiative forced a snowball effect for all sectors to come to a crossroad. This crossroad eventually led to a series of events that put even competing stakeholders in one table to discuss common issues affecting their industry. 

The most important milestone is the buy-in leading to the adoption of a model for development. The most significant decision that the stakeholders have made, and these stakeholders were mostly competing with each other, was to be in the same room to position Cebu as an information technology hub.

Most of the big stakeholders already got the point of the McKinsey Report of 1999 but the smaller players like the small information technology enterprises or SMITES have not read or heard of this report.

Even then, the call and opportunity to be in the same place and literally in the same table to plot the direction of Cebu's economy on the short and medium term was intriguing and enticing for a constituency seldom consulted of matters affecting them. 

Pre-summit Workshops participated by different stakeholders 

Prior to the Cebu IT Summit of March 2001 was a three-day Pre-Summit Workshop held on February 26-28, 2001 at the Toledo and Danao Room of Holiday Plaza Hotel along F. Ramos Street, Cebu City.

The Pre-Summit Workshop is a result of a series of meetings and workshops that attempted to cover as much issues about the information technology sector in general and Cebu's position in the current IT developments in particular.

I was engaged by TeamAsia the official event organizer to develop the materials and process for the workshop. It was not an easy task since I was given less than 30 working days to do it and informed that there maybe more than 30 people in each session, a number not ideal for a workshop of such nature.

In the workshop, I introduced a concept I referred to as the "Information Technology Loop". This concept was suppose to clearly identify who are legitimate stakeholders in the IT initiatives in the context of the Cebu IT Summit. 

The Pre-summit Workshop formed part of the final series. The IT Summit Steering Committee has organized four (4) Working Groups, namely: Policy & Incentives, Human Resource, Infrastructure, and E-Capital. Each of these Working Groups had a separate workshop session. The sessions were not smooth and uneventful. It was in reality far from that.

I already anticipated that the sessions will be a simmering cauldron since the organizers have invited practically the 'Who's who' of ICT and businesses in Cebu City. All with difficult issues to raise. All with strong willed CEOs, COOs, and key executives not about to give up a quarter of their respective positions in the agenda.

Current data at that time showed Cebu as a primary candidate for being the leading IT center in the country and Asia. Admittedly, there is still much to do and inhibitors we have to deal with to cross the borders beyond what it was then. This workshop became the first of our border crossings. What we gained in those three days became a road map that got us farther than just crossing boundaries.

The Cebu Information Technology Summit 

The Cebu Information Technology Summit or Cebu IT Summit was held on March 29-30, 2001, at the Cebu City Marriott Hotel. The keynote speech on the theme "Cebu is IT: Charting the Path, Setting the Goals Together" was delivered by Manuel "Mar" Roxas II, then Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry. The Cebu IT Summit was made up of two big summit workshop. 

Summit Workshop 1 on Day One was 'Setting the IT Cebu Vision' and Summit Workshop 2 on Day Two was 'Operationalizing and Achieving the IT Cebu Vision'. 

 The Cebu IT Summit presented a challenge for me as a Lead Facilitator at that time and to Ms. Siony T. Hijara, then Lead Documentor for all the workshops, since there was almost a hundred people in a room in each of the Working Committee Workshops.

We had to devise a process and facilitating methodology that will make the other facilitators and lead documentors do their job in the same way we did it during the Pre-summit Workshops. Adding to the challenge was the fact that the two other facilitators in the persons of Frederick Amores and Ross Madrid will be available only on the first day of the Cebu IT Summit.

The Summit went down in Cebu business history as a resounding success. We came out with a document which I personally handed to then City Mayor Alvin Garcia who closed the summit by reading the summit document to the participants on the last day of the event.

Before that year ended the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for IT or CEDfIT was born. Among the many Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Councils in the country only Cebu has a clear direction and serious stakeholders with an agenda but was created a year after.

It took three years for the Cebu Software Development Industry Association or CebuSoft to be formed. The rest of the IT initiatives was a whole series of fora, conferences, workshops and programs from the different stakeholders. 

The dynamism of the sector can undeniably be trace back to the program of action defined in that summit document of March 2001. In the 8-Point Program of Action only one have no champion and that it is the program of action for improving the quality of electrical power. 

The Next Step: Cebu ICT 2007 and Cebu ICT 2015 Foundation 

For several meetings now, the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI), CEDFIT, CebuSoft, Cebu Computer Society, telecommunications company, SMITEs and the Small and Medium Enterprise for Sustainable Employment Program (SMEDSEP) have been discussing the next great leap in the Cebu IT initiatives.

These initiatives will start this 2005 with the work-in-progress towards the 2nd Cebu IT Summit. CCCI is envisioning the creation of an entity that will consolidate and put focus to all of Cebu's effort in the ICT sector. 

For a lack of a better name, the group is referring to this entity as Cebu ICT 2015 Foundation. This foundation hopefully will be responsible for managing the next Cebu ICT Conference and Exhibition in 2007. In a concept paper presented by Bonifacio Belen, Executive Director of CEDfIT, he proposed consolidating the gains of the 'Cebu is IT' efforts by moving from the NASSCOM-India model to a Silicon Valley Model. 

The proposal introduces a model that will put Cebu as 'a' or 'the' IT hub by year 2015. This will be Cebu's next milestone.