Lawmakers advised the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to build local data centers as part of the 2026 budget to enhance data security.
During the House budget hearing for next year’s General Appropriations Bill, DICT budget sponsor FPJ Panday Bayanihan Representative Brian Poe said that 90 percent of government data is stored overseas, mainly in Singapore. It also costs taxpayers around Php12 billion annually on cloud services. Besides the high yearly expense of maintaining data centers abroad, the issue of Philippine data residing abroad also poses potential security and cybersecurity risks, according to DICT and lawmakers.
To address these concerns, the DICT is proposing to allocate Php2.5 billion for the construction of three government-owned “major” data centers, intending to build nine centers costing Php7.5 billion over three years.
Rep. Poe suggested that investing in on-premises data centers over the next three years is more cost-effective than paying annual fees for cloud storage. This approach could save the government Php36 billion in recurring costs.
Regarding funding sources, Bagong Henerasyon Representative Robert Nazal proposed using the Php21 billion balance of the Spectrum Users Fee (SUF) to finance the project. Since its creation in 2018, the SUF has collected Php41 billion, mostly allocated to the government’s free Wi-Fi program.