A legislator on Thursday cited the importance of proper data governance in delivering vital financial aid and social services to Filipinos in the post-pandemic era, saying the databases created by national agencies and local governments should by now be centralized and streamlined.
“Data governance will be crucial to government’s ability to deliver aid and services to our people, because we still have years of pandemic recovery ahead of us,” Taguig City Rep. and Senator-elect Alan Peter Cayetano said.
Cayetano pointed out that having a central database that is administered properly and is available across the entire government bureaucracy will enable government agencies and local authorities to distribute aid more efficiently to Filipinos in need of assistance.
He also mentioned that managing the millions of data sets collected from people throughout the pandemic is instrumental to the development of mobile apps that could make it easier for people to access government aid.
In a recent webinar hosted by the Department of Science and Technology, Ideacorp CEO Emmanuel Llana reportedly pointed out that the national government still scored low on data governance, as shown by the fact that agencies could not exchange data quickly.
Llana was also quoted as saying that the government should work on the interoperability of its databases, and must adopt a “whole-of-government” framework in collecting and managing data.
Cayetano suggested that the government unify and streamline the different databases created by national agencies and local government units throughout the pandemic, and consolidate them with the data being collected through the Philippine Identification System or PhilSys, the formal name for the country’s national ID initiative.
The lawmaker has spoken in recent months about leveraging technology and using mobile apps to deliver financial aid and government services more effectively, saying the state should take advantage of widespread smartphone use among Filipinos as well as the existence of a national ID system to make it easier for people to transact with the government.
“With the digital age and with the cellphone, dapat you could do almost everything when it comes to government transactions sa cellphone mo,” he added.