President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivers his speech during the commencement exercises of the Philippine Military Academy “Madasigon” Class of 2023 at Fort General Gregorio Del Pilar in Baguio City on May 21, 2023. (Photo screengrab from RTVM)
MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has directed the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to enable local government units (LGUs) to adapt to the e-government system as part of the government’s digitalization efforts.
According to the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) on Wednesday, the President issued the directive to DICT Secretary Ivan Uy during Tuesday’s sectoral meeting in Malacañang on the agency’s pending projects and cybersecurity concerns.
“Let’s capacitate our LGUs so they can adapt to the system,” Marcos said, as quoted by the PCO.
PCO said Uy explained to the President that with the system, LGUs will save a lot of money and boost income generation.
“So medyo gagaan ‘yung ano natin downloading. Makakatipid ho sila dito. And their income generation capacity will increase tremendously because there will be efficiencies in the collection,” Uy said.
(So our downloading will be lighter. They will save up on this.)
Marcos also tasked the DICT to conduct regular upgrades.
“So again it all boils down to that. That’s really the essence of digitalization. Let’s be sure that we are able to upgrade this system. Set it up to get them (LGUs) ready, so they know how to operate it,” he said.
DICT announced in December last year the e-government system, which includes the e-Gov Super App, a platform aimed to ensure the digitalization of government systems in the Philippines, including LGUs.
According to the PCO, government’s e-Government Priority Projects also include centralizing government cloud services, e-Report for citizens’ feedback and complaints and e-Gov App which will integrate all government services into one platform.
The e-Gov Super App is set to be launched early next month, it added.
In 2022, Philippines ranked 71st out of 131 economies in the global Network Readiness Index, a significant jump from the 85th ranking in 2021.
This was due to good performance on e-commerce legislation, high tech exports, and information and communication technology services exports.h