President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. has acknowledged that the Philippines has "not progressed" much as far as digital transformation is concerned amid the many innovations and technologies available at present.

Speaking at the National Information and Communications Technology Summit 2022 on Wednesday, Oct. 26, Marcos brought up the need for the country to catch up and do better in digitizing its bureaucracy, especially now that the country is "playing catch up" with the rest of the world.

"Unfortunately, when we look at the records, our country has ranked 89th out of 193 countries in the United Nations E-Government Survey. That is not an encouraging number," he said during his speech.

The survey assesses the digital government landscape among the United Nations member states.

"And this assessment of our performance is, at the very least, worrying. We experienced actually a regression. In other words, other countries have progressed. We have not progressed quite as much and therefore have fallen down, fallen down the list of e-governance in our — different member countries of the UN," the President has admitted.

He further said that this happened even though many innovations and technologies have been made widely available.

So, he prodded lawmakers to swiftly pass the E-Governance and the E-Government bills to realize the administration's vision of a "digital Philippines."

"he bills that we have asked the legislature to pass will enable (us) to ensure, fast, transparent and efficient government service for the Filipinos," he said.

"I therefore call on all our servant-leaders in Congress to help accelerate the approval of these bills once again. As I said earlier there is nothing that I can see that should hold us back from getting the future that we want," he stressed.

He said that the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) is now "working on" the E-Governance and the E-Government bill.

"I have asked them to bring it out as quickly as they possibly can so that we have the framework with which we will digitalize our government, which we will digitalize our bureaucracy," he said.

'We don't have a choice'

Marcos is also convinced that the country no longer has a choice but to accelerate its effort to catch up to the rest of the world in digitalization, so he expressed hopes that the government and stakeholders will work together in this endeavor.

"t is not something that we choose to do. It is something that we have to do. We are already playing catch up in terms of digitalization to the rest of the world. So it is not as if we have a choice here, we don't have a choice, that maybe we'll do it, maybe we'll not," he said.

"We have to digitalize if we are going to keep up all our plans for the transformation of the economy and our continuing redefinition of the Philippines' place in the community of nations. All of that depends upon your work and that we are able to do all the important work that we are trying to achieve. And that can only be done if we have a digitalized government, a digitalized bureaucracy, a strong partner with our private sector, in terms of the technology industries," he added.

He said the government "will do better", considering that the country's ICT professionals are among the best in the field and Filipinos are among the most tech-savvy people in the world.

He also expressed hopes that the summit will result in actionable proposals towards a truly citizen-centric, inclusive, and sustainable e-governance ecosystem.

"We have the tools. We have the knowledge. And most importantly, we have the people. All that is left to do is to have the will and the resolve to achieve it. So I reiterate my call to our partners: Let us forge ahead, build a better, brighter, more progressive future for the ICT sector, for the bureaucracy, for the entire Philippines," the President said.