The Philippines is moving toward blockchain-based governance: DICT’s David Almirol

The Philippines is moving toward digitized governance, with the eGov app being a landmark stride in this direction. According to David Almirol, blockchain will play a central role as the government moves its services on-chain.

Almirol is the undersecretary for e-government at the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT). At the London Blockchain Conference 2024, he joined renowned cypherpunk Ian Grigg and others on a panel discussing how blockchain impacts governments.

In an interview with CoinGeek Backstage, Almirol touted the eGov Super App as a central platform that brings together over 1,200 services in the Philippines.

“The idea of the super app is to unify [all these services] in a singular system, powered by the national ID so that you don’t need to repeat the submission of these documents. At the same time, it makes sure that we don’t have any fraudsters,” Almirol told CoinGeek Backstage reporter Claire Celdran.

The Philippines is a blockchain hub, and as Almirol revealed, the government is marching toward an on-chain future. It has already completed the first phase of its blockchain system to underpin its eGov app.

“We plan to launch a new platform called the eGovChain in the Philippines. One node will be maintained by the government while the other two nodes will be maintained by independent partners so that we’ll have this decentralised ledger,” he said.

Almirol acknowledged that the Southeast Asian nation needs to work on its regulations to accommodate blockchain. He believes the best approach is to focus on specific aspects of the technology and expand from there, as regulating the entire sector at once could be too challenging.

“We need to come up with implementable use cases that could help Filipinos, simplify processes and empower financial inclusion to people. Once we have that primary policy, everyone, including our lawmakers, will be able to understand.”

Almirol added that the Philippines must be among the leaders in digital governance and blockchain adoption. Already, the country has successfully implemented critical services digitally, from business permits and civil registry with eLGU to healthcare through eHealth and payments with eGovPay.

Watch: The Philippines is at the forefront of blockchain tech adoption