Wonder No More

On Wednesday, INQ7.net carried a story headlined “CICT chief wonders why Disini is after him” which strangely enough, I can’t find on INQ7.net today. I pasted a copy below for reference. Essentially, Mr. Pena is reacting to the 2 open letters (letter 1 and letter 2) which came out in the Philippine Star and this is what he had to say:
Asked to comment on the open letters, Peña declined to comment, except
to say, “the whole issue is in the hands of the technical working
group [created by the CICT]. But I just wonder why is the [open
letter] being pointed at me?” I’m amazed at Mr. Pena’s comment. Just because he’s handed over the redelegation process to a Technical Working Group (which he created), then dotPH shouldn’t address the issue to him anymore. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

In my view, here the reason why the letter is addressed to Mr. Pena:

(a) He decided to form the Advisory Board
(b) He appointed its members (including PHNET’s Bombim Cadiz and the gov’t rep)
(c) He (alone) issued the PH Domain Guidelines (despite the fact that the President ordered the NTC to handle the matter and without regard to the fact that CICT is a collegial body with other Commissioners)
(d) According to Advisory Board members, he personally inserted some provisions in the guidelines
(e) He has refused to re-convene the Advisory Board in order to open discussions on the Guidelines with dotPH
(f) He decided to seek re-delegation
(g) He formed the Technical Working Group to re-delegate the PH domain

If anything, I think Mr. Pena is responsible for the government’s confrontational stance against dotPH when dialogue would have been the better option. This dispute is heading nowhere and if my guess is right, the re-delegation process will fail (i.e, ICANN/IANA won’t re-delegate).

More importantly, by pleading ignorance, Mr. Pena’s attitude is troubling. If the CICT head refuses to own up to his actions, what more can we expect when he tackles more serious problems facing the ICT industry? Will he casually fend off criticism this way?
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CICT chief wonders why Disini is after him

Mar 02, 2005
Updated 08:31pm (Mla time)
Erwin Lemuel Oliva eoliva@inq7.net
INQ7.net

VIRGILIO Peña, chairman of the Commission on Information and
Communications Technology (CICT), wonders why Joel Disini, embattled
administrator of the .ph Internet domain, is now after him.

In two open letters published this week in local newspapers, Disini
singled out Peña to be behind moves to replace him as “.ph”
administrator. The letters also publicly criticized the Presidential
appointee for his involvement in the creation of new guidelines to
administer the “.ph” domain.

Asked to comment on the open letters, Peña declined to comment, except
to say, “the whole issue is in the hands of the technical working
group [created by the CICT]. But I just wonder why is the [open
letter] being pointed at me?”

Disini’s open letters discuss the disparity between the quality of
service in the gov.ph and edu.ph registries as well as in the .ph
registry operated by dotPH Inc.

The “.ph” administrator said an independent US firm, which he
commissioned, found that the gov.ph and edu.ph registries suffered
more downtime than dotPH, which Disini owns.

“Data was gathered by an independent US firm, which we contracted to
give feedback on our services. Secretary Peña, I don’t know how else
to say this, but this performance is simply — unacceptable. Your CICT
website talks about the promise of ICT. But each time someone visits a
gov.ph website, or sends email to the government, or accesses an
online government database, this begins with a query to a gov.ph name
server. When your gov.ph name servers are down, all these ICTservices
that you speak of will be unavailable to the public,” Disini said in
his letter.

It was disturbing, he said, that the head of the agency responsible
for promoting information technology in the country seemed unaware
that such problems exist in his own backyard.

Disini added that while Peña has been meeting with the managers of the
gov.ph and edu.ph registries to find ways to improve the PH Domain
system for the past 18 months, he took no steps to fix the problems of
the other “.ph” domain names.

“Your sole solution was to attempt to shut down DotPh — the most
efficient registry operator. No attempts were made to get any
technical data about the service you claimed to improve. You didn’t
measure server downtimes. You didn’t check server response times. Nor
did you fix lame delegations on the gov.ph and edu.ph name servers. We
hope that by bringing this matter to your attention, steps can be
taken to resolve these problems. May we suggest, in the future, that
the CICT be more about Technology, and less about politics?” Disini
said.

Disini also pointed out that the administrator of the gov.ph or edu.ph
registries were part of the advisory board created by the CICT to work
on the new guidelines on the administration of the “.ph” domain.

“You’ve stated that the guidelines were created to improve the
efficiency of the ‘.ph’ Domain. Yet the technical people who drafted
your guidelines run inefficient registries,” Disini continued.

The CICT has recently created a technical working group to initiate
the re-delegation process of the “.ph” domain, following Disini’s
refusal to acknowledge the new “.ph” guidelines. The guidelines
require him to choose between being a registrar and a registry of
“.ph.”

Re-delegation involves replacing the existing administrator of the
country-code top level, or .ph, domain.