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Cristina Chi - Philstar.com
May 1, 2026 | 2:14pm
The DICT was provided in 2023 with a budget of P15.46 billion, made up of new, automatic and continuing appropriations. That year, the agency was able to strengthen its obligation rate to 62.2 percent, from 35.8 percent in 2022.
The STAR / File
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology disabled 12 government digital systems because it could not afford to pay for cloud server space, a senior official admitted to senators on Wednesday, April 29.
DICT Undersecretary David Almirol Jr. said during the Senate hearing that the agency was forced to take the systems offline after an unexpected surge in users crashed the eGovPH App, the government's main digital services platform, for nearly five hours one day and six hours the next about two weeks prior.
Almirol said the problems began when e-wallet integrators and government agencies launched on the platform at the same time, straining a single cloud service that hosts the eGovPH app, the digital national ID, the e-verify system, the eLGU platform serving around 1,000 local governments and eGov AI, the app's built-in intelligent assistant.
"We were overwhelmed," Almirol told senators in Filipino. "We had no choice, Mr. Chair, sad to say. We disabled 12 government systems."
Asked directly whether the shutdowns were due to the agency's inability to pay for cloud server space, he said: "Yes, that is the reality, Mr. Chair."
Sen. Bam Aquino said the pullback of services over a lack of funds was "unacceptable" and "insane" when the Department of Budget and Management has funds available.
DICT released a statement Thursday, April 30, acknowledging the outages but attributing them to growing public adoption of digital services.
"This incident reflects the growing number of Filipinos using digital government platforms every day," the department said.
"As adoption continues to increase, DICT is undertaking the necessary enhancements to strengthen system capacity, improve performance, and ensure greater reliability during periods of high demand," it added.
The department said it is coordinating with the DBM on long-term "resource planning" for its digital infrastructure.
DICT's cloud infrastructure currently hosts 28 platforms used by national agencies and more than 1,000 local governments for services including national ID verification, e-government transactions and local administrative functions.
Funding gaps at DICT are not new. During House budget deliberations in September 2025, lawmakers learned the government spends about P12 billion a year on cloud services, with 90% of its data stored abroad, mostly in Singapore — a setup both DICT and legislators called a national security risk.
But DICT has also struggled to spend the money it does get. A 2024 Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department analysis found the agency left P5.84 billion of its 2023 budget unspent.
