Philippines lags behind SEA peers in digital government readiness

The Philippines continues to trail several of its Southeast Asian peers in digital government readiness, reflecting uneven progress in the country’s push to modernize public services through technology.

In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) latest Digital Government Index (DGI), the Philippines scored 0.28 out of 1. The country ranked third-lowest among the eight Southeast Asian countries that the study covered.

The OECD’s DGI draws on data from Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, collected between September 2024 and February 2025.

The index was presented in Government at a Glance: Southeast Asia 2025 in cooperation with the Asian Development Bank.

This placed the Philippines below the regional average of 0.37. The Southeast Asian average itself lags the OECD member-country average of 0.61.

“Governments can improve their agility and policy impact by putting digital transformation at the heart of modernization efforts,” OECD said.

The index benchmarks how governments integrate digital technologies and data into policymaking and public service delivery across six dimensions. These are digital by design, data-driven public sector, government as a platform, open by default, user-driven services and proactiveness.

The Philippines recorded a low score of 0.36 in “digital by design,” also placing it third lowest among its regional peers.

This suggests that while digital initiatives exist, they are not yet consistently built into the core design of government operations.

“Setting a strategic vision and clear mandate for digital government is a prerequisite to steer digital government initiatives, and for facilitating more effective and inclusive cross-sector collaboration,” the OECD said.

The group added that all of its surveyed Southeast Asian countries have a mandated government institution or formal coordination body on digital government.

For its part, the Philippines, through the Department of Information and Communications Technology of the Philippines, has developed a National ICT Government Agenda and a Digital Government Masterplan for 2023 until 2028.

4th highest

The Philippines also ranked fourth-highest in proactiveness, with a score of 0.26. The OECD said this could be further improved through the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), an area where Southeast Asia as a whole continues to lag.

“The adoption of AI can help governments become more proactive. Used strategically and responsibly, governments can leverage AI to enhance public sector productivity, responsiveness and accountability,” the OECD said.

Only three countries in the region currently have a national strategy or agenda that references the use of AI in the public sector, including the Philippines, according to the report.

However, the OECD said the Philippines has yet to deploy AI systems in government operations and does not have binding or non-binding instruments in place to guide the responsible use of algorithms in the public sector.

At the regional level, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations published a guide on AI governance and ethics last year to support member states in developing common principles and safeguards.

More recently, President Marcos Jr. said the Philippines should fully utilize AI to help drive national development, including through legislation, signaling potential policy momentum in the coming years.

Mr. Marcos also approved in May the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Philippines. The Department of Science and Technology initiated this effort.

Report:

OECD (2025), Government at a Glance 2025, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/0efd0bcd-en.

Source: Inquirer