The Marcos administration has less than two years left to pull the country out of the rut that it is stuck in and leave on a high note, yet it has bewilderingly found time for the Cabinet to play another round of musical chairs.
On Monday, ‘high performing’ Secretaries Vince Dizon and Giovanni Lopez swapped places as President Marcos was ‘shifting gears to accelerate reform.’
Dizon is taking back the reins of the Department of Transportation ‘to fix the daily commute,’ while Lopez will transfer to the embattled Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) ‘to make sure the reforms there last.’
These changes came on the heels of yet another rigodon: Robert Joseph de Claro was moved from the Social Security System to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), which is certainly having a rough October.
In less than two weeks, the primary agency tasked with developing and implementing the country’s ICT agenda saw its former chief Henry Aguda resign and its Undersecretary David Almirol Jr. suspended, with both being investigated by the Ombudsman for a litany of alleged irregularities.
Aguda was being probed over the alleged ‘ghost internet’ project of the DICT, where contractors installed ‘cheaper, outdated or even fake software’ for government agencies, as well as the Free Wi-Fi for All program, where sites had installed equipment but with no internet services.
Almirol, meanwhile, was put on preventive suspension over a supposed conflict of interest involving Multisys, a company he founded in 2012 that has been linked to some P1.55 billion worth of contracts awarded by the DICT from November 2023 to May 2025.
Leadership vacuum
Their departure left a leadership vacuum at the DICT that has now been filled following De Claro’s transfer from the state-run pension fund, with Mr. Marcos touting his ‘very strong background’ in the digital economy and the digital world.
De Claro should hope that his background will be enough to competently lead the DICT, as he has his work cut out for him.
After all, DICT’s problems run far deeper than supposed wrongdoings at the top.
According to the latest research on the agency by the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department (CPBRD), DICT has been struggling since 2020 with a chronic inability to efficiently use its budget for approved projects.
Records show that the DICT recorded a record-low obligation rate of 35.8 percent in 2022, equivalent to a ‘staggering’ P9.72 billion of unused appropriations.
This eventually improved to 87 percent in 2024 – its highest level since its creation in 2016-but then plunged to 61.7 percent in 2025, with P9.16 billion of available but idle funds that could have been disbursed to expand the government’s various ICT programs nationwide.
And it gets worse.
‘Discouraging performance’
The CPBRD said the latest data from the Department of Budget and Management showed a ‘discouraging performance’ from DICT and its attached agencies, with the obligation rate settling at a minuscule 9 percent as of June 30, 2026.
This is the slowest spending rate to date and the only single-digit utilization rate among the national executive departments, the CPBRD underscored.
It was also substantially below the second-lowest performer, the DPWH, at 16.6 percent, and far off the average of 49.5 percent for all monitored government agencies, damning evidence of the DICT’s utter inability to implement its projects on time.
The long-suffering Filipino people are unfortunately bearing the consequences of the DICT’s consistently poor performance.
To cite just one example, the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center has been lagging in the implementation of its programs to fortify the country’s defense against cybercrime that has grown in scale and sophistication, which is a great disservice considering that the Philippines has consistently ranked among the countries with the highest incidence of cybersecurity risks.
Multiple deficiencies
And as if these glaring shortcomings were not enough, the Commission on Audit (COA) has likewise flagged in its voluminous audit reports multiple deficiencies at the DICT.
Among these are questions on the implementation of its Free Wi-Fi for All program to democratize access to the internet and help sustain the country’s fast-growing digital economy and the rollout of the Philippine Digital Infrastructure Project (PDIP), a flagship project that was supposed to boost broadband connectivity across the country, particularly in remote areas.
The $288-million PDIP was approved in 2024, and the national fiber backbone was expected to be completed by the end of 2028. However, two years on, the project has yet to take off, with COA noting ‘zero disbursements’ as of February this year.
These are but some of the flaws that De Claro will have to immediately correct within the limited time that he has been given to make a difference at the woefully underperforming DICT.
Hopefully, this latest change at the top will lead to a transformation across the organization that will enable it to fulfill its mandate to keep the digital space safe, secure, and beneficial for Filipinos.