President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he found it “very disturbing” that only a few government agencies are able to offer their services online in an age of digital connectivity.
Marcos stressed the importance of digitalizing the government in a roundtable interview with television journalists Monday (January 23).
“The ordinary Filipinos who have connectivity talk to every aspect of their lives through the internet, to the school of their children, to their business, to their friends. And the only entity that they do not talk to over the internet is the government because the government is not digitalized,” the President said.
“So let’s digitalize the government and that will take us a long way to helping in the ease of doing business,” he added.
Marcos said improving the digital connectivity of government agencies will improve the business climate and help solve the problem of red tape.
“We have to remove any discretion… Kahit wala kang kausap na tao, nagagawa mo ‘yung kailangan mong gawin — makuha mo ‘yung lisensya mo, makuha mo ‘yung permit mo, makapagbayad ka nung whatever it is, ng fee, whatever it is to get your papers,” he said.
“We have to digitalize Customs. We have to digitalize all of these collecting agencies so that the BIR, even the central bank, the payments can be made over the internet. All of those things that we don’t do now,” Marcos added.