The next step after eGovPH is GovTech

DECODED: TECH, TRUTH, AND THREATS

The Philippines finally has an E-Governance Act. The real test begins now, turning its promise into a digital government that actually works.

Republic Act No. 12254 gives the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) a stronger mandate to create an integrated, secure and interoperable digital government. Together with eGovPH, we finally have both a legal framework and a platform around which government services can converge.

But there is a problem that legislation alone cannot solve.

For decades, government agencies have been building and procuring technology largely on their own. One agency needs an online portal, another needs an authentication system, another needs a database, another needs a payment gateway. Different contractors come in, different technologies are deployed, and eventually government ends up with systems that cannot easily talk to each other.

Taxpayers may effectively pay several times for technologies that perform similar functions.

Worse, citizens pay for this fragmentation through inconvenience.

This is why I believe the next step after eGovPH should be GovTech.

Singapore provides a useful model. Its Government Technology Agency is not simply another office that writes policies, approves projects or supervises contractors. GovTech has engineers, cybersecurity specialists, designers, product managers and other technology professionals who actually build and operate shared government technology.

The Philippines does not need to copy Singapore. But we should seriously consider adopting the same philosophy.

Government needs its own deep engineering capability.

Imagine if agencies did not have to build their digital infrastructure from scratch every time.

Instead of every department procuring another login system, government could have common trusted digital identity infrastructure. Instead of agencies separately developing payment gateways, they could connect to shared government payment infrastructure. Instead of databases becoming isolated islands, agencies could securely exchange verified information under common interoperability, privacy and cybersecurity standards.

The E-Governance Act already points us in this direction by requiring interoperability, cybersecurity standards, digital payments and greater integration.

But interoperability cannot simply be ordered in a memorandum. Someone must engineer it.

That is where a Philippine GovTech could come in.

It could build and maintain the common digital infrastructure upon which agencies develop their services. Agencies would still own their mandates and specialized systems, but they would no longer need to reinvent the same basic technologies repeatedly.

There is also a cybersecurity advantage.

Every separately built government system creates another potential weak point. Security standards can vary, legacy technologies accumulate and responsibility becomes fragmented. A GovTech model could embed cybersecurity, privacy and secure software development into shared infrastructure from the start.

Most importantly, government technology should be designed from the citizen’s perspective.

A Filipino should not have to understand why one government database cannot communicate with another or why information already given to one agency must be submitted again to another.

To citizens, there is no Department A, System B or Database C.

There is only government.

eGovPH has started giving government a single digital front door.

The E-Governance Act has provided the blueprint.

Now we need to build the engineering capability behind that door.

The next step after eGovPH should be GovTech.