by: Angelo Kairos Torres dela Cruz
Seven years of unparalleled success in planning, designing and implementing the only comprehensive Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Education program comes to an end with the iSchools Project Close-out.
The project started its series of nationwide project close-out activities in Bukidnon last October 19 and is set to end in Baybay, Leyte on December 7 of this year.
In between these dates, iSchools PMO, through the consistent support of its SUC (State Universities and Colleges) partners, will have completed 27 roll-outs in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
As iSchools Project Manager Toni Torres puts it, “all projects must close to create a window for evaluation and reassessment. This is also to gather all lessons learned and best practices".
This project close-out series represents iSchools' commitment in changing the way things are done in government projects. We are doing our very best to become accountable to taxpayers, credible as an institution in promoting ICT and transparent as all government initiatives should be.”
The iSchools Project close-out requires the attendance of principals, laboratory managers, school ICT coordinators, DepEd ICT coordinators, SUC project managers and iSchools staff.
As the very first round in a projected multi-stakeholder approach, the closeout is expected to provide the iSchools Project Management Office with the actual “grassroots feel” of the over-all experience of iSchools' 1,000 recipient public high schools.
The results of this close-out series will also set the context and tone of the upcoming close-outs, in which a different set of stakeholders are to be invited.
When taken as a whole, the three scheduled runs of iSchools Project Close-out will allow iSchools sponsors, beneficiaries and management to holistically evaluate the results of the project's interventions to the present state of ICT in Philippine education.
The closeout will also allow iSchools PMO to reconcile the goals and objectives bannered by the project when it started -- thus allowing rooms for comparison with what the project achieved and has become.
The closeout also paves way for a transparent review of the project's value of taxpayers' money.
Ultimately, the closeout will prepare recipient schools with the reality of independently facilitating, sustaining and improving the iSchools project through their own ingenuity.
“iSchools is conducting a three-level project close-out so that, if ever reopened, future managers can improve upon its design and implementation,” Torres concluded. (AKTD-DOST/ICT/PIA9/ALT)