Philippines to join hands with US, India for digital transformation

At the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington, following the Digital Public Infrastructure lecture, he said that it is very important for the Philippines, India, and the US to lead in the digital public infrastructure initiative because nations have much to gain from this. He also had a brief chat with Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders of the Indian multinational information technology company Infosys.

He said building public digital platforms is very much aligned with the campaign promise of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to speed up the country’s digital transformation as mentioned in the release.

Romualdez said that it is the reason why the House of Representatives has passed the E-Governance/E-Government Bill, which seeks to shift the entire bureaucracy to the digital space for faster and transparent delivery of services, and for better engagement with the public. The House of Representatives passed on third reading an e-governance bill on March 6. A counterpart bill in the Senate is currently at the committee level. If passed into law, the digitisation of paper documents and processes is expected to encourage cooperation between the government and the private sector in improving the ease of doing business.

Over 55 per cent of the worldwide outsourcing market is accounted for by the information technology and business process management sectors in India. In order to concentrate on leveraging technology and digitisation to improve governance, the Indian government introduced the Digital India Mission in 2015.

The United States Agency for International Development, meanwhile, allocated USD 18 million in January to support Philippine small and medium-sized businesses as they accelerate their digital transformation.

Romualdez bared that during the event IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva extended her best wishes to the Philippines and its strong economy, read the release.