Digital Infrastructure 1st – PSAC Says. No, Digital Knowledge Bank 1st! – FAH Says

How you look at “digital infrastructure” is how good or bad your view and/or delivery of digital knowledge is! So, which of the above images is the Philippines’ Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC) being guided by? I say PSAC’s answer to that question will determine how well and how soon those digital services will deliver.

I have been a digital convert since then-Director General of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) William Dar proposed and submitted to PhilRice his proposal for Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture (OpAPA) 24 years ago. OpAPA was a digital eye-opener for me. On my part, then as a consultant for PhilRice, I wrote a book that embodied my idea of OpAPA: “The Geography Of Knowledge” (TGoK), which I submitted as a complete digital copy. (For more of OpAPA & TGoK, see “William Dar – The New Moses With The New Tablets!” 04 Sept 2019, Ani Kitá, blogspot.com). My TGoK demonstrated how the Knowledge Bank could be constructed to serve anyone, including the beginner farmer.

No, OpAPA did not first ask for physical infrastructure; instead, it asked for digital infrastructure – and that is what PSAC should have intended.

You need little physical infrastructure – you need 10 million pieces of digital structure! And you have a 24-year old sample of that with Mr Dar’s OpAPA and my associated TGoK.

Among those discussed is PSAC’s 10,000 Digital Civil Servants project involving trainings to improve the government’s ability to deliver digital services.

PSAC promised beyond 10,000 digital civil servants, 1M digital jobs by 2028.

Okay that. Now, in Agriculture, the #1 Industry in the Philippines, what the country needs right now is a digital Knowledge Bank that teaches day in and day out, 24 hours a day, nonstop!

During the meeting, President Marcos directed the creation of one million digital jobs by 2028 to align opportunities with the evolving needs of the labor market.

Not Labor but Agriculture. 2024, I say, almost immediately – PH can create 1 million digital jobs for collecting knowledge bits & pieces about Agriculture – to help 10 million farmers succeed.

Cellphone agriculture, I recommended earlier. See my essay, “How About A Cellphone-Friendly Knowledge Kingdom For Science & Technology For All Kinds Of Learners?” (18 April 2024, “Communication for Development of Vibrant Villages, blogspot.com). The cellphone is now ubiquitous in Filipino hands – but it’s useless for the search for knowledge right now, as there is no cellphone-friendly Knowledge Bank.

I just saw the DoST-PCAARRD’s Facebook post about its eLibrary having more than 9,400 publications relating to agriculture, aquatic and natural resources. And you can download any of the publications for free! This agriculturist thanks you, PCAARRD, but that means only those who know and understand the technical terms can read and understand any of those publications.

I therefore insist that the Philippine government should develop the Digital Knowledge Bank first. Initially, we may have to employ 1,000 digital knowledge diggers, after training them even without meeting them physically.

Then: On to knowledge at the tip of one’s fingers!@517