By Saul Pa-a/PNA
TAGAYTAY CITY — Several foreign development and productivity sector experts and partnership analysts on Friday shared their best innovative practices during the two-day International Conference on Public Sector Productivity at the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) Conference Center here.
Dr. Santhi Kanoktanaporn, Secretary-General of the Asian Productivity Organization (APO), led prominent resource persons in the summit themed “Shaping a Future-Oriented and Smart Public Sector.”
“Governments are starting to use innovations, information, and communications technology as early as the 1990s to create online services and automate processes in business and citizen interaction mechanisms,” Kanoktanaporn said.
He noted the need for the public sector to go for more efficient and effective innovative solutions and scale up quality and productivity aspects.
“The information and communication technology, particularly the internet and mobile phones, has unleashed the massive force not only to influence our lives and offices, but also has made a tremendous impact on everything that we do today,” he said.
Kanoktanaporn said current digital technology environment has, even more, challenged the government and the public sector on how to meet increasing citizens’ expectations, thus prompting countries to improve their performance and productivity to address challenges on climate change, food security, energy, water, financial markets, and the global economy.
The APO as a regional intergovernmental organization, according to Kanoktanaporn, has been supporting member-countries to address the challenges and for the sustainable socio-economic development of Asia and the Pacific through productivity enhancements.
The APO was established in 1961, with the Philippines as one of the founding countries.
The DAP serves as the organization’s implementing arm in the Philippines.
The APO International Conference on Public Sector Productivity is a platform for driving higher and sustainable productivity in the public sector through knowledge sharing among governments, think-tanks, academe, private institutions, and civil organizations in the Asia Pacific region.
The conference aims to optimize knowledge with innovative approaches, emerging trends, and new technologies to address the growing complexity of public sector productivity issues.
Meanwhile, Dr. Fadhil Bakeer Markar, partnership analyst of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Sri Lanka, shared that innovation also requires “learning to unlearn,” so that one could usher in new ideas, new insights, and thinking out of the box.
Markar stressed the need to review the systems and realize there is room to re-invent and do things differently.
Markar pointed out that innovative entities and public sector innovations across the world have set up structures, which are viewed from different perspectives.
“The solutions of today and solutions for tomorrow requires multiple disciplines,” he said. “Any problem that needs to be analyzed is not just one because of the questions: who are we serving that uses human-centric design and who are you providing services to?”
He advised that in public service deliveries, implementers need to look at the process. “Tweak a little bit” but this doesn’t mean changing the whole process,” he said.
Other foreign resource speakers in the conference included Dr. Emma Blomkamp of Paper Giant in Australia, Executive Vice President Tengku Azian Shahriman of PEMANDU Associates in Malaysia, Dr. Tuomo Kuosa of Futures Platform in Finland, Revor Lui of Knowledge Associates Hong Kong Ltd., and Masato Kuki of Pirika Inc. of Japan.
