Philippines DICT leader reveals successes in ‘challenging’ digital ID journey

MOSIP Connect 2025 has kicked off in Manila following the inaugural edition of the multi-day conference last year in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In a candid keynote speech at the opening of this year’s MOSIP Connect, the Philippines Undersecretary for e-government David Almirol, Philippines Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), spoke about his country’s “not easy” digital transformation experience.

Described by MOSIP as the “most successful national rollout to date,” the Philippines has been one of the most prominent partners to the open-source digital identity technology platform. With MOSIP helping to supply 130 million digital IDs to over 26 countries, both parties highlighted that the Southeast Asian country’s digital IDs make up a very significant part of that number.

While MOSIP can provide the tools, software and technical training, the practical implementation is an altogether different story. Almirol described it in plain terms, calling it “quite a painful journey” — contrasting it with the rewards that lie on the other side.

“There are a lot of issues, not only technical but political,” he admitted. “We faced challenges in infrastructure, up-skilling, government.”

But the undersecretary underscored how his country now has the “technical muscle” and the capacity to build the systems needed to better realize the potential of national digital ID. With 84 million digital IDs issued, the Philippines has seen 100 million transactions for public and private services. Projects also include building an e-gov super-app, and enabling efficiencies between government agencies.

Almirol said the country has saved 60 percent in expenses for cloud services, with such optimization, and connected local governments with the national government digitally as the archipelagic country synchronizes data, in a “whole-of-government” approach.

Invoking hypothetical government agencies that “beautify” their webpages and call it digital transformation – Almirol quipped that this was “digital pretension” – the undersecretary underlined the importance of the back-end, the foundation that supports everything else.

In the case of the Philippines this is the data exchange platform it has built, which means data can be shared more easily between agencies and so citizens don’t need to waste time going to various physical offices to input and verify their credentials.

The Philippines now has 21 e-gov platforms “live” according to Almirol (of the 25 platforms it has developed and launched), with 440 million e-gov transactions as of February 2025.

By June, the government hopes to bring online an eGov Command Center running real-time monitoring for greater transparency and efficiency to display various data related to the system. Almirol concluded his presentation with pride for the collaboration between MOSIP and his agency and delivered a hopeful parting message: “Now we have a new Philippines.”

The Philippines Statistics Agency’s (PSA) Dr. Claire Dennis Mapa, National Statistician and Civil-Registrar General, also welcomed attendees to Manila for MOSIP Connect 2025’s opening ceremony, and pointed to how identity is at the core of inclusivity, helping to ensure access to essential services.

PSA partnered with MOSIP (the Modular Open Source Identity Platform) for the event, which runs March 11-13.

Cybersecurity and biometric assessment

MOSIP President Prof. A.N. Rajagopalan compared digital ID and digital public infrastructure to the concept of the commons in another Tuesday keynote, noting that they should serve all people. Rather than being co-opted by the self-interest of individuals, a concept known as the “tyranny of the commons,” instead they can serve all people, and represent the commons’ triumph.

The community appears to share that belief, with 30 percent of new contributions to the open source code coming from MOSIP’s growing community.

The organization also took the opportunity to share several other expansions of its project. A cybersecurity initiative is being launched in collaboration with the Turing Institute. MOSIP training is expanding to eSignet and Inji.

MOSIP is also committed to assessing every aspect of biometrics, from sample quality to bias, and teased a deep dive into its “Biometer” efforts with Dr. Ted Dunstone of Biometix and BixeLab and Dr. Mark Hooper of the Turing Institute on the event’s closing day.

 

Follow all our coverage from MOSIP Connect 2025.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  DICT  |  digital government  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  MOSIP (Modular Open Source Identity Platform)  |  MOSIP Connect 2025  |  open source  |  Philippines