Leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives on Thursday, March 9, launched the e-Congress website, saying the online portal would strengthen the coordination between both houses of Congress on all measures filed and other legislative output to make their inter-chamber process much better and much faster. This, followed a meeting between Senate President Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri and former president and now Senior Deputy Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at the National Museum which is the former old Congress building. Arroyo took the place of Speaker Martin Romualdez who was reported to be under the weather. "What is important is we are here together, united for the cause for our people which is to digitalize all our proceedings, our documentation, and I hope that when we do this, maybe we can also help save the environment," Zubiri said. Zubiri explained that the e-Congress would streamline their legislative process and lead to more efficient passage to laws for the Filipino people. "We will also be giving the Filipino public a more accessible platform where they can keep track of our work as is their right to do so. In improving our transparency, we can also enjoin the public to be more active participants in the legislative process. In this way, we can truly function as a Congress for and of the people. It is high time to be modernized our processes between the Senate and the House of Representatives,’’ he explained. "If the legislative branch carries the responsibility of creating timely laws, then our processes must keep up in the time as well," he added. Zubiri explained that e-Congress is "truly a landmark initiative that will launch us into the future of strengthened partnership between both chambers." "If the pandemic taught us anything, my dear friends, it is that we can and must take advantage of digital technologies to make our respective legislative proceedings much easier and much more efficient," he stressed. "That meant among other things upholding virtual and eventually hybrid sessions and hearings authorized in the use of e-signatures for bills and committee reports and beefing up our efforts to reflect the movement of our legislative documents thorugh our website in realtime," he said. "We must also adapt and innovate wherever and whenever we are called for... to resist in the case of digital technologies is to be left behind and we cannot be a Congress that is trapped in amber, archaic, and irrelevance," he added.