A funding shortfall tied to cloud services prompted the Department of Information and Communications Technology to shut down a dozen government digital platforms, an official disclosed during a Senate inquiry.
During the hearing, DICT Undersecretary David Almirol Jr. explained that the disruption followed a spike in activity that overwhelmed the government’s unified digital platform. The eGovPH App experienced repeated crashes lasting several hours on consecutive days, affecting multiple connected services.
According to Almirol, the strain occurred when various government agencies and e-wallet partners simultaneously rolled out integrations. These additions relied on a single cloud environment that also supports services such as the digital national ID, verification systems, local government platforms, and the app’s AI assistant.
“We were overwhelmed,” Almirol told senators in Filipino. “We had no choice, Mr. Chair, sad to say. We disabled 12 government systems.”
Pressed on whether financial limitations led to the shutdowns, he responded: “Yes, that is the reality, Mr. Chair.”
Senator Bam Aquino criticized the situation, describing it as “unacceptable” and “insane,” especially given the availability of public funds through the budget department.
In a statement issued the following day, the DICT acknowledged the outages but framed them as a consequence of rising usage. The agency noted that increasing reliance on digital government services has placed additional pressure on its infrastructure.
“This incident reflects the growing number of Filipinos using digital government platforms every day,” the department said.
“As adoption continues to increase, DICT is undertaking the necessary enhancements to strengthen system capacity, improve performance, and ensure greater reliability during periods of high demand,” it added.
The agency also said it is working with the budget department to address long-term needs for its digital infrastructure, which currently supports dozens of platforms used by national offices and over a thousand local government units.
Concerns over funding and system management have surfaced before. Lawmakers previously flagged the government’s heavy dependence on overseas data storage—largely hosted in Singapore—as a potential security issue, while a budget review also showed that billions in allocated funds for the agency had gone unused in a prior fiscal year.
