THE government’s use of cloud services abroad to store 90 percent of its data poses a national security risk, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) admitted on Tuesday night.
During the budget deliberations of the DICT’s P18.9 proposed national budget for 2026, budget sponsor Rep. Brian Poe (FPJ Panday Bayanihan) admitted to Rep. Robert Nazal (PL, Bagong Henerasyon) that reliance on data storage in other countries poses financial and security risks.
The DICT revealed that most of the data is kept in Singapore, for which the government pays some ₱12 billion annually.
Because of this, the department is asking Congress for a ₱2.5 billion budget to initially build three government-owned “major” data centers before constructing facilities that will cost another ₱7.5 billion.
Poe said the DICT is trying to classify which government data are considered “high points of concern” and which ones “are less urgent.”
“However, the goal of the DICT and the government is hopefully that we’re able to create our own servers here in the Philippines to store the data,” he told the plenary.
Poe, a son of former Sen. Grace Poe, said the projected need to create an e-Gov app alone is more than 300 terabytes of capacity “with more required as additional agencies migrate.”
“The agency argues that investing ₱7.5 billion in nine data centers over three years to develop on-premises data centers would ultimately be cheaper than continuing with recurring cloud costs, which reach ₱12 billion every year,” he said.
“We’re spending about ₱12 billion on cloud services. So there is an opportunity here for us to make this investment over the next three years so that the government can save a total of ₱36 billion,” Poe added.
Nazal proposed that the DICT tap its Spectrum Users Fund (SUF), the fund for the government’s free Wi-Fi program, which has a balance of ₱21 billion.
The free Wi-Fi program has a funding requirement of some ₱7.5 billion yearly, while spectrum fee collections only reach more or less ₱6 billion.
“Before we go into that, I think the DICT has a pressing commitment by October to deliver these free Wi-Fi sites to the Filipino people,” Poe replied.
ONE-DAY EXTENSION
Also yesterday, the House of Representatives approved House Resolution No. 320 “requesting the Honorable Senate of the Philippines to grant its consent to the House of Representatives to extend its plenary session to October 13, 2025 for the purpose of considering the General Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2026 on third and final reading.”
The House initially intended to wrap up plenary deliberations on the budget today, but Speaker Faustino Dy III has said lawmakers would need to extend the plenary debates before voting on the measure.
The House and the Senate are scheduled to adjourn on October 10, Friday. Since sessions cannot be held during weekends, the House intends to hold the extra session day on October 13, Monday, to approve the budget on its third and final reading and send it to the Senate.
