THE “Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes” was established by the UN General Assembly in its Resolution 74/247 session in Vienna on May 30 to June 10, 2022. It was a wellattended group of meetings where 190 member states, including the Philippines, had the opportunity to put in the country’s intervention. To everybody’s knowledge, that meant a lot because in every opportunity we put in what was good for majority of the nation; which extended to the OF (not OFW because OFW only relates to the overseas Filipino workers while the OF is all-encompassing, it connotes overseas Filipinos in toto).

The Philippine delegation was physically led by the Department of Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Kira and United Nations and International Organizations (UNIO) here in the Philippines and the first secretary of the Philippine mission in Vienna to the UN, Bolivar Bao; the Department of Information and Communications Technology-Cybercrime Investigations and Coordinating Center (DICT-CICC) and the National Privacy Commission. I was joined by my junior Dan Joshua Valenton and deputy commissioner Chris of the NPC and two of his staff. Online there were a host of agencies meticulously going through everything and finalized by the UNIO of the DFA before each intervention of 30 plus topics a day get an opportunity to be submitted as an intervention and taken up in the plenary. This was led by the Department of Justice lawyer Gracia. This was a continuation of the New York 10-day meetings. By this set of meetings, a lot of topics were taken up; about 30 plus topics a day were debated upon and continuously for eight days as the first was usually dedicated to other matters while the last was to discuss the next set of meetings.

The opportunity lent our country the perfect time to initiate technical cooperation bilaterals to benefit the Filipinos. The Philippine team initiated 10 bilaterals out of the 150 completed from 190 nations participants. All of which were endorsed to assistant secretary Kira of DFA-UNIO and will now be pursued by the new administration. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs nd Crime (UNODC), it was a feat, but to us Philippine delegates who initiated and labored we feel that it’s just a start of an agile solution to a lengthy and seriously meticulous procedure of a treaty that will supplant the Budapest Convention.

The story behind my participation in this is a heart-warming initiative.

It’s been 20 months for me in the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC). I came in as a highly technical consultant of the DICT detailed with the new agency for 11 months, and then appointed September last year by President Duterte as Director IV for the CICC with a portfolio of one of the three offices — Cybercrime Plans Policy, Monitoring and Coordination Office-CPPMCO (my portfolio and there are two other offices, Operations-CIO and Finance and Admin-FAO). If there’s anything I’ve realized, it’s that I have done everything I set out to do to make sure that the agency has proper stakeholders coming on board, and their understanding of the importance of the center in fighting cybercrime. To prepare myself, I retooled myself extensively (at my own expense) and in the process became very highly specialized since my background is fintech, regtech, govtech and public ad.

Long story short I know that many laws, initiatives, projects and businesses fail because resources were not properly allocated in onboarding the stakeholders/costumers/participants, etc. So, what happens is the conceptualizers are left with a white elephant project needing more money to sell/market/train/educate the stakeholders/ costumers adopting the initiative successfully. This catalytic strategy is mastered by my political family’s experience of more than 80 years in public service; my dad since 1967 and myself since 1986.

Knowing this I instituted heavily on the stakeholders onboarding (230 plus, plus agencies/instrumentalities, more than 8,000 public officials and employees contract of service and job orders; 160 women leaders; and now down to the youth of the smallest unit of government the Batang Barangay) as the priority and or to be done in parallel with what the whole CICC concentrated on. Which was that the center was going heavy for the buildup of the physicality of anti-cybercrime. Facilities were built pouring in 99 percent of the budget. Last week they launched the digital forensics lab.

The worldwide onboarding through initiating technical cooperation bilaterals for the Filipinos is the 20-month cap of accomplishments of my 12-person team; the CICC-CPPMCO with less than a few million-peso budget (including my own salary as contribution) — my office having three divisions: plans and policy, monitoring and coordination, and international cooperation. Stakeholder engagement must be ripe or properly prepared for, and relationships must be solid for the best turnover to the Marcos administration.