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Annex
C - Technology Assessment Capsules A. BIOMETRICS
B.
CADD – COMPUTER-AIDED DRAFTING AND DESIGN C. DATA
WAREHOUSING / DATA MINING / DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS / EXECUTIVE
INFORMATION SYSTEM D.
DISTRIBUTED DATABASES E.
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE F.
ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT G.
GIS – GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS H. INTERNET
TECHNOLOGIES includes INTRANETS / EXTRANETS
/ VPN / INTERNET TELEPHONY / VIDEOCONFERENCING OVER IP) I.
ONLINE LEARNING J.
REMOTE SENSING K.
TOKEN TYPE AUTHENTICATION SYSTEMS L.
VIRTUAL PRIVATE NETWORKS (VPN) M.
WIRELESS / MOBILE COMPUTING A. BIOMETRICS
Description Biometrics
is an automated method of recognizing a person based on physiological or
behavioral characteristics such as fingerprints, speech (voice), face,
retina, iris, handwritten signature, hand geometry, and wrist veins.
Biometrics address the need for authentication, the process of
identifying an individual, replacing or augmenting verification based on a
username and password. Biometrics
can be used in identification mode
wherein it identifies a person from the entire enrolled population by
searching a database for a match. It can also be used in verification mode wherein it authenticates a person's claimed
identity from his/her previously enrolled pattern. Biometrics offers some
unique advantages because identification is based on a person's intrinsic
part. Tokens, such as smart cards, magnetic stripe cards, physical keys
may be lost, stolen, duplicated, or left at home. Passwords may be
forgotten, shared, or observed. Applications In
the Philippines, biometrics would most likely find first application in
providing verification and authentication for financial transactions (bank
loans and social security claims) and limiting access to high-security
areas like military establishments and sensitive government buildings. The
United States – the US government in particular – currently uses or
has proposed to use biometrics in the following ways at the Federal,
State, local, and foreign office levels. §
Electronic
and Physical Access Control. One use is to provide robust authentication for
access to computer systems that hold sensitive information used by the
military services, intelligence agencies, and other security-critical
Federal organizations. Physical access control to restricted areas is
another key application. There are many law enforcement applications,
mostly for fingerprint recognition, at the Federal, State, and local
levels. Other law enforcement applications include home incarceration and
physical access control in jails and prisons. §
Fraud
Prevention and Detection. One of the most extensive applications of
biometrics in the U.S. is for entitlements. Fraud in entitlement programs
is estimated by the General Accounting Office at over $10 billion per
year. Pilot programs in several States have demonstrated dramatic savings
by requiring biometric authentication for applicants for entitlement
benefits. §
Commercial.
There are also significant commercial applications of biometrics,
principally in financial transactions like use of Automated Teller
Machines (ATMs), credit or debit cards, banking by phone and through the
Internet, and buying and selling securities by phone or through the
Internet. Biometrics is also being considered to reduce or prevent fraud
in the use of cellular telephones, which is estimated to have reached over
$1 billion a year, and phone credit cards. There are also commercial
applications for computer access control, access to web site servers,
access through firewalls, and physical access control to protect sensitive
information. Current
Applications The following are some
specific applications of biometrics in other countries:
Several
Federal, State, and local government agencies have purchased biometric
systems. The Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, Drug Enforcement Agency, Department of Defense,
Department of Energy, Department of Public Safety, Department of State,
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Reserve Bank, Hill Air Force
Base, the Pentagon, and the US Mint have approximately 250 biometric
devices with 13,000 enrolled users for access control applications. The
following are some planned applications of biometrics in the US:
Considerations The
system is expensive. It is not only the initial cost of the sensor or the
matching software that is involved. Often, the life-cycle support cost of
providing system administration support and an enrollment operator add a
lot to the initial cost of the hardware. Prognosis Biometrics
technology has not attained enough maturity to merit definite inclusion in
the GISP. According to the Biometrics Consortium, the only available
information on biometric devices is often just a sales brochure. The
performance claims in the sales brochure may not hold true for a given
device in a given application. For example, a device that measured 0.3%
equal-error rate in a lab was found in the field to have a false-rejection
rate of approximately 25% (at an unknown false-acceptance rate). While a
change in this device's threshold between the lab and field tests might
explain the difference, it is more likely that the 0.3% equal-error rate
was measured under unrealistic conditions.
Establishment of an independent evaluation center to test the
maturity, reliability and repeatability of a biometric device was expected
by the end of 1996. While
the reliability of biometrics as a means of authentication is increasing
as the technology matures, its price remains prohibitive. Substantial
investments are required to set up, operate, and maintain the necessary
technological infrastructure. Most, if not all, components would have to
be sourced abroad. Expectedly, the major cost after initial investment
would be in maintenance and technical support from other countries,
particularly the US. However,
given the rapid development in information technology, it is not
inconceivable that within the 5 year timeframe of the GISP, sufficient
progress in biometric technology could occur to make it a viable option
for implementing say a national crime information system, or even an
election system. B.
CADD – COMPUTER-AIDED DRAFTING AND DESIGN Definition CADD refers to the use of a computer graphics
system to create, modify, manipulate, and display drawings and diagrams.
CADD assists engineers, architects, and designers in the same way word
processors assist secretaries and the general population. Drawings,
designs and diagrams stored as CADD files are more easily accessed and
modified compared to paper blueprints. When used for mapping, CADD systems
treat map sheets or drawings as separate entities with little or no
continuity across map sheets. While
some CADD systems may contain limited database management capabilities,
they seldom have map registration or map projection transformation
capabilities. Applications CADD
has promising applications in the following areas of government: §
Public Works
and Utilities (DPWH) §
Urban
Planning and Zoning (LGUs) §
Storage and
Retrieval of Architectural Plans (LGUs) §
Industrial
and Product Designs (Design
Center) §
Storage and
Retrieval of Engineering Plans and Drawings (IPO) Considerations The use of CADD technology for the storage and
retrieval of plans, drawings, and designs will entail modernization of the
equipment and staff skills of the agencies or local government units to be
affected. This will require capital expenditure without any immediate
tangible benefits, as it will take a while before a sufficient inventory
of drawings in electronic form becomes available. Prognosis The technology is proven and mature, but the lack
of immediate tangible benefits does not make this a high priority for
government. Nonetheless, it may be considered an investment for the
future. C.
DATA WAREHOUSING / DATA MINING / DECISION
SUPPORT SYSTEMS / EXECUTIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS Description These
technologies collectively provide automated tools for data analysis in
support of decision making. They
include technologies and IT facilities to store and gather data from
individual transaction databases into massive databases and systems to
extract, analyze and present data into forms that are meaningful to
decision makers. Data
warehouses are large data repositories purposely designed and organized to
allow analytical processing directly performed by users.
They allow more "data-based" decision making through the
use of analytical models based on historical data. The use of data
warehousing as decision support systems or executive information systems,
has been receiving a lot of attention because it avoids the need to unite
all systems into one processing system in order to get a consolidated
enterprise-wide picture. Instead, the data warehousing concept precisely
is built on the collection of data from multiple processing systems,
organized through metadata which
include data summaries that are easier to index and search. Data
mining goes beyond changing or enhancing data presentation for decision
making. Its main
purpose is to discover previously unknown relationships among data items
such as possible
cause-and-effect relationships. It
uses automated tools to look for hidden patterns among data sets.
Statistical techniques have long been developed precisely to look
for correlations and dependencies from datasets.
Conceptually, however, data mining technology is different in that
it is designed to have access to massive electronic databases and data
warehouses. Several data
mining applications are now commercially available.
However, this field can still considered a complicated, diverse
technology in its infancy. The
value of these data warehouses is greatly enhanced by integrating them
with the Internet so they can be easily accessed from any location, at any
time. This way, government workers out in the field or assigned to
regional offices can use their browsers to access the data warehouse
through their agency’s intranet. Applications Generically, data warehouses
have been used in the automated prediction of trends and behaviors, and
the automated discovery of previously unknown patterns. Given this, data
warehousing and EIS/DSS can be employed in the following areas in
government: §
Economic modeling and analysis §
Financial / Fiscal modeling and analysis §
Agricultural sector modeling and analysis §
Domestic and International Trade modeling and
analysis §
Employment data analysis and practically any area of
governance where analysis of massive historical data is applicable. Considerations Among the major considerations
in the applicability of this technology are the following: §
Cost.
Data Warehouses require huge data storage – at least in the hundreds of
gigabytes, and over time, in terabytes. The hardware resources needed to
store and process this amount of data can be considerable. For example, a
1.2 terabyte disk storage system costs almost $ 1 Million each. §
Sharing
of data.
Data warehouses will require collection of related data from different
sources within government. It will certainly put to test the ability and
willingness of agencies to share data with each other. §
Long-term
implementation. Because of the need for sufficient data to have
accumulated before a data warehouse becomes useful, there will necessarily
be a long “gestation” period – counted in years - before any
benefits can be derived. If the project is to become successful, there
must be a firm commitment to see the data warehouse project through its
lengthy implementation. §
Choice
of subject/topic. Because of these three considerations, there is a
need to choose the subject or topic of the data warehouse to be
implemented very carefully. It must be focused on a critical function of
government to make it worth the investment cost and long-term effort. Prognosis The
cost and high chances of failure may indicate that data warehousing should
be given a relatively low priority. However, the clear lack of
information-based decision making in government suggests that, at the very
least, one or two pilot warehouses addressing key areas should be set up.
Government cannot afford to keep postponing this, as the long
implementation requirement means that it will take five to ten years
before any benefits accrue. D. DISTRIBUTED DATABASES Description Relational
database technology now makes it possible to build applications where the
database tables may physically reside in different hardware. Stored
procedures and ODBC allow programs running on one machine to access a
database that resides in another machine. Two-phase commit mechanisms with
automatic transaction rollback provide support for online mirroring of
databases, i.e. simultaneously maintaining two identical copies of the
database while ensuring integrity. Most database management systems also
support database updates from transaction logs, a feature that can be used
to automate offline mirroring of databases. Applications Distributed
databases allow greater flexibility in designing and building integrated
applications that cross geographical and bureaucratic boundaries. For
example, access to remote databases via ODBC and/or stored procedures can
be employed to allow consolidation of information that comes from servers
of different agencies. Similarly, mirroring techniques can be employed to
support centralized repositories of consolidated data from the field, even
as local subsets of the data exist on field computers to support
distributed transaction processing. Considerations Practically
all the major commercially available database management systems support
distributed processing techniques. And systems have actually been built
and operated successfully employing this technology. Building distributed
database applications in government would entail: §
More powerful, and therefore more expensive,
database management system software; §
Special expertise to design the database, and build
more sophisticated applications; §
Planning and coordination to ensure the
availability and integrity of the data;
and §
Increased networking among government offices to
allow sharing of databases. Prognosis Given
the devolved, decentralized nature of operations government, distributed
database technology is a must in building efficient integrated information
systems. The only major obstacles are the higher cost (due to more
expensive software and increased networking) and limited manpower (for the
expertise in planning, building and in coordination). These can be solved
with careful resource allocation and private sector involvement. E.
ELECTRONIC COMMERCE Description Electronic
Commerce is the use of computers and telecommunications networks to
facilitate business transactions like the buying and selling of products,
services, and information. E-commerce can be generally classified into two
types: business-to-consumer and business-to-business. While e-commerce has
existed since the early 1970's through technologies like EDI and data
encryption, it caught wide public attention only recently as several
e-commerce sites sprung up in the Web.
E-commerce over the Internet allows the promotion, buying, and
selling of goods and information that cut through geographical and/or
political boundaries. Perhaps the best example of successful e-commerce
over the Internet is the popular Amazon.com, which allows users to search
for and order books, gifts, CDs, and videos online. Applications
E-commerce
technology can improve governance through its application in at least the
following areas: §
Government
procurement/divestment. The whole process of procurement -- from
pre-qualification of suppliers, to consolidation of requests from
agencies, to bidding and monitoring of status and delivery -- lends itself
well to the application of e-commerce. Similarly, auctions and bids such
as those for privatization of government assets and confiscated smuggled
goods have a lot of successful precedents on the Web. §
Government
Securities Auction and Trading. The Philippine Bureau of
Treasury has pioneered in the use of e-commerce in the Philippines through
its electronic auction and electronic trading facilities for government
securities. These facilities employ the proprietary networks of Bridge and
Reuters. The BTr recently introduced an Internet-based facility for the
public to buy Treasury Bills through its Small Investor Program agents.
Together with the DOF it is looking into the establishment of an
Internet-based bond exchange. §
Document/form
submission. One way to improve the efficiency of government
transactions with the public is through electronic submission of required
forms and documents. A pilot project at the Bureau of Customs showed how
processes can be improved and the delays minimized through the electronic
submission of import declarations. With the growing number of Philippine
companies connected to the Internet, there are many government services
that can benefit from the application of this technology.
Considerations Growth
of e-commerce in the Philippines would depend on two things: §
Security
and authentication. Because e-commerce involves transfer of money,
goods and/or services, security of transactions and authentication of
transacting parties are essential. One way of achieving this in a
"closed system" (i.e. where there is a limited, identified set
of participants) is to set up a Virtual Private Network with encryption
among the transacting parties. This approach may be resorted to in doing
e-commerce with, for example, registered brokers/dealers, top taxpayers,
and banks. It will not apply, however, to an "open system" where
the general public is involved. It would be prudent for government to
limit its e-commerce applications to closed systems in the meantime. §
Lack
of legal infrastructure. To protect transacting parties, and ensure
compliance with rules and collection of appropriate taxes, the existing
legal infrastructure would have to be revised. In the US, for example,
there are laws (e.g. the Mail/Telephone Order Rule, and the Fair Credit
Billing Act) which effectively safeguard the rights of transacting parties
in e-commerce. Similar laws and the appropriate mechanisms for
implementing them would have to be introduced here. Prognosis Security
and authentication problems and lack of legal infrastructure make it
difficult to pursue e-commerce for the general public. However, there are
local precedents for the successful implementations of limited e-commerce
(e.g. closed system) such as the auction and trading of government
securities, where the parties involved may come up with their own
contracts and operating covenants to ensure the enforceability and
legality of their transactions. Given these, the government should look
into more of these opportunities, not only for improving efficiency in at
least some aspects of its operations, but as a way of "testing the
waters" for more ambitious e-commerce applications in the future when
the security and legal issues shall have been resolved. F. ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT Description With
the spectacular growth of the web and other IT trends, re-purposing of
already published materials will be a sunshine industry.
“Re-purposing" is a catch-all term for conversion of a broad range
of different publishing types and components: §
Printed
Documents.
Electronic documents make up the smallest fraction of the total mass of
published materials today. Converting these into electronic files will
take either of two forms: Ø
Scanning to a bitmap image for indexing, or Ø
Capturing the content via optical character readers
(OCR) and converting it into a format that can be selected using
cut-and-paste or cut-and-copy features available in most software
applications. §
Digital
Documents.
Files that are already in electronic form can be converted to other
formats in a number of ways. Many are already being taken apart and
recomposed in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) for uploading to the Web.
Many others are being converted to PDF (Adobe) format because it retains
the integrity of the source document much better, with all elements
including fonts, typography, layout, and vector graphics intact. §
Photos
and other Bitmap Graphics. Bitmap graphics that are large in storage size and
saved in a broad range of file types are being compressed and converted to
more universal formats - .tif, .gif, and .jpg - primarily for accessing in
HTML documents. PDF conversion of documents incorporating bitmap images
offers very dramatic compression ratios of 50:1 (or even considerably
smaller). §
Vector
Graphics.
Maps, logos, and fonts are normally vector graphics that are small in size
and perfectly scalable for viewing and printing. Since HTML cannot handle
vector graphics, they need to be converted to bitmaps before conversion to
.gif or .jpg formats. Documents
in such format as PDF are also available for viewing on the Web and with
vector graphics compressed to about 4:1 ratio. Two
standards have emerged for cross-platform document file formats: HTML and
PDF: §
HTML.
Documents marked up in the simple page description HTML can display in a
variety of computer environments such as Unix, DOS, Windows, NT, and
Macintosh. Yet balanced against the broad compatibility of this format are
two factors: 1) the cost -- in time and money -- of converting documents
from other document formats into HTML; and 2) the author’s lack of fine
control over character fonts and page layout. A
new software category, called portable document applications, attempts to
provide the best balance of all factors. It combines the compatibility of
HTML with the page layout quality of desktop publishing applications, font
quality of the Postscript language, compact file size of compressed image
formats, and a simple interface designed for typical, non-programmer
computer operators. The leading application in this category is the
Acrobat suite of tools from Adobe Systems Inc. §
PDF.
Short for Portable Document Format,
a file format developed by Adobe Systems. PDF captures formatting
information from a variety of desktop publishing applications, making it
possible to send formatted documents and have them appear on the
recipient's monitor or printer as they appear on paper.
To view a file in PDF format, the Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed.
It is a free application distributed by Adobe Systems. There
are two Acrobat components to consider: the proprietary PDF file format
and the suite of software tools (for browsing and editing to manipulate
documents) stored in this file format. The two are used interchangeably
but in fact they are distinct; PDF is the name of the file format and
Acrobat is the suite of software tools. The Acrobat PDF file format is
based on the Postscript language, also developed by Adobe. Like
Postscript, Acrobat is vector rather than bitmap based. Vector file
formats describe fonts, images and other page elements as a series of
mathematical descriptions and relations. Character fonts are encoded as
mathematical descriptions of lines, shapes and distances between sets of
points. As an oversimplified example, the character “V” is
fundamentally three points: the top left, top right, and bottom middle
where the two lines intersect. Applications Government
can find use for this technology in two ways. First, a central repository
of official documents in electronic form can be set up to store and
provide access to all future government public documents. Since
practically all government offices already use PCs to generate their
memos, orders, rulings and other documents, a central document repository
can be achieved prospectively. All that is needed would be to set up a
large server, perhaps at the National Archives, to where all government
agencies would be required to submit electronic copies of all their
official documents. Second,
the government should consider converting all existing documents into
electronic form to save on storage space, make them easily accessible, and
preserve their integrity. This is a much more complex and costly exercise
because of the volume of documents for conversion. Considerations Creating,
storing, and disseminating documents in digital form offer substantial
advantages over traditional print publishing for a variety of reasons: §
Capability to communicate beyond the printed word.
Digital publishing allows addition of motion, sound, forms, interactivity
and linking to a document. §
Distribution
Costs. Printing
documents first from a central source then distributing them on paper
requires careful anticipation of demand with costly consequences.
Distributing documents electronically offers the recipient the
option to print it as needed and secures access to documents with
passwords and digital signatures. A CD-ROM, for example, can hold text for
up to the equivalent of 1700 lbs. of paper. If the cost of printing,
postage, of storage and preservation are added, the savings would be
immense. §
Search
and Retrieval.
Paper files can only be filed by one index field. Access requires
training, and re-filing is prone to errors. Statistics show that 7.5% of
paper documents get lost completely. In contrast, digital documents can
have any number of keywords attached and access is controllable through
password protection. Hyperlinking between documents speeds up access to
related information. If sufficient processing power is available, “brute
force” searching through voluminous text is also possible.
On the other hand, there are negative factors to consider such as: §
Cost.
Prospectively, the cost is minimal, mainly covering central document
repository and end-user license for the software tools (HTML or Internet
browsers and the Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing PDFs are free and
downloadable from the World Wide Web).
This pales against the potential cost savings from reduced demand
for paper documents, document transport, and handling charges. However,
converting old documents to electronic would be quite expensive, and
government may very well limit its scope. §
Security
and "Turf". Some agencies treat their data and information as
proprietary secrets and do not look favorably on sharing of information.
This mindset will have to be changed to one of transparency and
service-orientation. Prognosis Converting
the same document into other information products from essentially the
same source material means less publishing and document-related cost.
From a cost/benefit standpoint, re-purposing or electronically
converting and disseminating existing documents means that agencies can
reuse existing information resources to accomplish newly defined
communication objectives. New distribution channels can be exploited.
Budgets can be spread over a broad range of applications. For
instance, the production costs of promotional CD-ROMs can be amortized to
include the cost of and uploading the same materials to the Internet and
producing brochures and internal IEC (information, education, and
communication) materials. G.
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM (GIS) Description
A
Geographical Information System (GIS) Is an information technology
application for the conversion, integration, management manipulation and
analysis, query, deployment, and use of geographically referenced
information. What
differentiates a GIS from an MIS application is the use of maps with
related attributes describing features on the map.
It is a very powerful visualization and analysis tool that helps
uncover spatial relationships not possible in the traditional sorts and
other manipulation of databases (i.e. attributes of map features). In the
new paradigm. GIS is really part of the MIS of an organization, which
handles all sorts of information, including spatial information. The
other spatial technologies provides information inputs (content) to the
GIS. In addtion, transaction
based information gathering can be integrated to the GIS provided each
record is geographically referenced. The
strength of the GIS for government information systems is its geographic
integration capability. Thorough
GIS, it is possible to immediately link and visualize most government
databases, that could not be linked before, through geography or location. Applications National
and local governments worldwide, including a few in the Philippines, have
utilized GIS technology for productive uses in the following applications. ·
BaseMapping and Thematic Mapping ·
Integrated Land Information Systems ·
Environment Monitoring and Resource Management ·
Precision Agriculture ·
Population and other Censuses ·
Elections Management and Monitoring/Reporting ·
Epidemiological/Health Studies ·
Facilities Management ·
Infrastructure Planning, Construction Management
and Monitoring ·
Disaster Preparedness Planning and Damage
Assessment ·
Public Safety/Public Order/Defense Applications ·
Transportation and Traffic Management ·
Land Use Planning and Zoning Administration ·
Tourism Planning and Tourism Services Information
Systems ·
Promotion of Economic Development ·
Environmental Impact Analysis ·
Real Property Estate Valuation. Tax Assessment, and
Marketing ·
Teaching Geography and other applications Consideration ·
Infrastructure
– Most systems run on PCs and/or Unix Servers.
System peripherals like digitizers, plotters, scanners, printers
are widely available. There
are many commercially available software (GIS, Image Processing, Digital
Photogrammetry and cartography, the price ranges from free to desktop
systems to the expensive high end professional systems.
The Philippines is the only country among the original ASEAM
without ground receiving station fro remote sensing data, thus it
currently depends on acquisition services of remote sensing data service
providers. ·
Data
– Local implementation of GIS is hampered by the lack of or poor quality
of digital basemaps or cartographic database. The development of this
database is a priority element in the full development of GIS applications
in the country. Data standards are not in place. This is necessary for the
sharing of geographic information among agencies and the local government
units. Many agencies of government have started to build their digital
spatial databases that have turned out to be of poor quality. There must
be a policy on investments in the build up of digital databases to ensure
that these investments do not go to waste. ·
Data
Sources
– The national government is the largest producer, collector of
geographic information. To date much of these information are on paper.
They are spread out in the bureaucracy and some of these data sets have in
fact been digitized more than once by several groups. It is necessary to
pinpoint to owner of the data who will be responsible for their conversion
to digital forms. Data is the most expensive component of GIS and its
integrated development must be planned well. ·
Orthophotos
and OrthoImageries – More modern implementations of GIS now use
orthophotos and orthoimages. The advantage of using
orthophotos/orthoimages is that the utilization of GIS is decentralized
and really put in the hands of users. Feature extraction, for instance,
can be now in the hands of, say, the land use planner, the forester, the
assessor, the road planner, etc. instead of the GIS specialist or GIS data
analyst. Orthophotos and
orthoimages are geographically rectified photos and imageries with known
accuracies throughout the orthophoto/imagery dataset. ·
Implementation
– The process of setting up a GIS requires careful planning and
implementation, including: Ø
Identification of users and their functional and
information requirements |