THE PHILIPPINES is on track towards the full integration of e-government systems by 2022 as key agencies push to become more digital.

THE judiciary is still facing age-old problems that are creating some of the most insurmountable bottlenecks in government -- the court caseload -- and while brute-force methods like more judges and more courtrooms are playing a key role in solving the problem, the Supreme Court believes information technology will play an increasingly larger role.

ONE of the fastest-rising sectors in the Philippines, the information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) industry has reaped the rewards of growing demand for IT and other services. With business process outsourcing (BPO) thriving, the industry has also provided jobs to many Filipinos as the population transitions to become more technologically-savvy.

WE SHOULD BE in the robot future by now, but persistent economic and cultural factors keep pulling us back. The availability of cheap labor discourages investment. The attractiveness of foreign labor markets leaves us content with sending away our low-skill workers instead of investing in their training. These are some of the occupations that are holding on despite the availability of alternatives that, in theory, ought to be freeing us up to do higher-value work.

THE ARGUMENT for adopting new technology often comes with many utopian promises like flying cars, nuclear power without consequences, social media that brings people together instead of tearing them apart, and so on. Here’s an update in 2019: Self-driving cars, the highest point in the technology’s evolution so far, keep crashing. Nuclear power plants sometimes blow up, while the fuel becomes a target for terrorists or is otherwise difficult to dispose of safely. And, needless to say, have you been reading about Brexit lately?

ACCORDING to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) 2019 World Investment Report, released in June, global investment flows in 2018 fell 13% to $1.3 trillion, marking the third consecutive year that global flows have fallen.

THE PHILIPPINE agriculture sector has always been weighed down by low productivity and high production costs, because it has long lagged in adopting technology.

BROUGHT to the fore by the 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis and the 2011 film inspired by it starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, sports analytics has seen its use in major sports grow exponentially, including in the Philippines where some teams are using it to enhance their game.

BUSINESS SCHOOLS strive to keep a finger on the pulse of technological innovation because such changes in technology could herald how business might be done in the future, and their students must be prepared to adapt and thrive in rapidly-changing environments.

WHEN Keller Rinaudo founded his drone-based delivery start-up Zipline, it was with the lofty dream of building “an instant, automated logistics system for the planet.” It was 2014 and, at the time, AI-powered robots were commonplace only in the warehouses of the world’s tech giants: Alibaba, Amazon, and the like. But Mr. Rinaudo felt that the technologies of the future were being wasted on delivering tennis shoes and pizza. Instead, he believed “the long-term impact of that technology is providing universal healthcare to every person on the planet.”

GOING from the age of homing pigeons and the telegraph to the age of virtually instant face-to-face interaction in the span of a century, there is perhaps no better symbol of technology’s explosive growth in the information age than telecommunications.

A BUSINESS-AS-USUAL approach can no longer get the job done. Companies need to recognize sustainability as part of their business model to survive and thrive.