I was just browsing the Infotech section in the Inquirer and ran across this article. It details an ASEAN initiative called AVIST whose goal is to interconnect the various country's academic and research institutes and provide learning material online. The Philippines, through the DOST, is a beta test site. Here is Darwin Santos (ironically named after Charles Darwin of course, and not Darwin Ramos of Marikina City, which is another story), the "senior science research specialist" at the DOST, bitching or scratching his head, tell me if you can tell:

According to Darwin Santos, a senior science research specialist in DOST and one of the three test phase beneficiaries of AVIST, the system basically depends on basic Internet connection, though it has problems passing through the firewalls of the DOST’s network though the enrollment interface was readily accessible.

Santos said that after enrolling, he was unable to connect to the AVIST training modules since their network firewall, filters and antivirus applications were blocking connection. He said that if any of these were to be disabled, the whole DOST network would become vulnerable to attacks.

The only way he was able to access AVIST was from his home PC with a prepaid Internet card. Even then, the connection was unstable.

“I wasn’t able to connect to the video files through RealPlayer, though I was sure my connection was very fast,” he said. “I couldn’t do anything even after several tries.”

Santos said that the other AVIST recipient, Meraida Reyes, also a research scientist of DOST, had the same problem.

“We already reported the problem to Felix Librero of the UP Open University and he promised to address the problem,” Santos said.

Tell me why on earth would you go on a major daily newspaper representing the project you are working on only to complain about it? A complaint which, at face, seems utterly simple to remedy: go to your firewall setup, dummy, and fix it. It obviously works for direct connections to the internet! Since you're the "senior science specialist" maybe you could do something about it rather than be a dummy and complain.

On the other hand, it seems the DOST needs a systems administrator to manage their intranet. Santos may be good at signing people up, but saying he tried several times and exclaiming that he was "sure (his) connection was very fast" doesn't sound like a tech guy to me at all.

Which begs the question: doesn't the DOST have a PR department who can step in and edit or replace this guy? At least put someone in there with some spin ("The system is currently being tested now and some technical parameters are being worked out." instead of passing the blame (yes, the blame) on to the Open University?)

Make me put my foot in my mouth and explain this all to me please. Grrr. Nakakainis.