Pres. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has accepted the resignation letter tendered by Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) secretary Ivan Uy, Palace spokesperson Claire Castro said on Thursday, March 6.
Reports of Uy’s resignation have floated in media circles since Wednesday, March 6, but it was not until Castro confirmed it to Palace reporters that his departure became official. As late as Thursday afternoon, DICT assistant secretary Aboy Paraiso said Uy “continued to attend to his official duties and responsibilities.”
With Uy gone, online news outlet Bilyonaryo.com has reported that Sen. Grace Poe will take the helm at the ICT agency once her term ends this June. She is no longer eligible to run after completing her two consecutive terms at the Senate.
For the meantime, the same Bilyonaryo report said DICT undersecretary for cybersecurity Jeffrey Ian Dy will serve as secretary in an acting capacity until Poe is appointed as head honcho.
In his three years as DICT chief under Marcos Jr., Uy was able to notch some major accomplishments such as launching the highly-regarded eGov App and the National Cybersecurity Plan, which allowed the Philippines to leap in the 2024 United Nations Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI), moving up to 53rd from 61st in 2020.
But it was also under his watch that some of the hacking incidents that breached major government websites and systems occurred. Even with the passage of SIM Registration Law, mobile scams proliferated during his stint as ICT chief.
Aside from his absences in cabinet meetings because of his foreign trips, Uy was also said to have “underperformed” due to the slow progress of major ICT infrastructure initiatives such as the National Fiber Backbone (NFB) project. The second and third phases of the flagship broadband plan have yet to be completed.
While his frequent travels abroad was one of the major issues hurled against him, his quitting still came off as a surprise to the local tech community, which came to know him after his stints as chief information officer of the Supreme Court during the time of former chief justice Hilario Davide and as chair of the Commission on ICT during the administration of the late president Benigno Aquino III.
