MANILA, PHILIPPINES – President Benigno Aquino III on May 23 signed into law a Republic Act 10844, which allows for the creation of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and effectively abolishes all operating units of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) with functions and responsibilities dealing with communications.
The new law will now turn the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) into as simply the Department of Transportation (DOT) in which it abolishes several agencies and transfer them to the newly created DICT.
The following agencies, to be transferred to DITC are as follows:
- Information and Communications Technology Office (ICTO)
- National Computer Center (NCC)
- National Computer Institute (NCI)
- Telecommunications Office (TELOF)
- National Telecommunications Training Institute (NTTI)
- and, all operating units with functions and responsibilities dealing with communications.
The new law provides for a six-month transition period from effectivity for the full implementation of the transfer of functions, assets and personnel. Meantime, it said,“… the existing personnel shall continue to assume their posts in holdover capacities until new appointments are issued.”
DITC will be headed by a secretary who will be assisted by three assistant secretaries and with the backing of 4 under secretaries.
DITC will be responsible for protecting information to possibly prevent data leaks, similar to the recently hacked incident at the Comelec website and attempting to help ICT services in different sectors among their numerous different assignments. We should also be seeing standardized government websites that are hopefully less prone to hacks.
Malacanang said the law requires that the department heads have “at least seven years of competence and expertise in any of the following: information and communications technology; information technology service management; information security management; cybersecurity, data privacy, e-commerce, or human capital development in the ICT sector.”– Carl E
