In a landmark victory for civic tech, the Philippine government is adopting BetterGov.PH as its official national portal. Unveiled at the BetterGov.PH Summit 2026 in Eastwood City, the new Gov.PH portal is being co-developed by the eGov team of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the Filipino open-source developer community.
Inspired by his experience with government websites overseas, tech founder Jason Torres quietly started BetterGov.PH last year out of a desire to create a better Gov.PH portal.
According to Torres, Gov.PH is the nation’s digital front door not just for Filipinos but also for the global community. As such, it needs to offer an experience on par with the world’s best digital public services.
In the wake of the Philippine corruption scandals and public outrage in 2025, the project evolved into a grassroots open-source civic tech movement run by “Angry Nerd” volunteers. It was officially launched in September of the same year.
The movement has since grown into a community of more than 5,000 volunteers, including developers, designers, data scientists, policy advocates, and researchers working across civil society.
Some of its projects include transparency dashboards, open national budget analysis and public spending trackers, a public infrastructure and flood control project tracking system, a political dynasty tracker, a scam-checking service, a public petitioning system, systems that make laws and bills more accessible to citizens, and an AI assistant focused on Philippine government.
At the summit, community projects were showcased, and developers shared their experiences.
Also launched was the BetterGovPH Fellowship, which opened applications for builders to work with the government, in partnership with civil society and the IT community, to address real public challenges.
Government officials from various departments and members of civil society attended the event, where participants discussed challenges in areas ranging from e-government and open data to health and energy.
Torres outlined plans for a unified national design system to ensure visual consistency and accessibility across all government digital properties. The system will be developed in collaboration with the country’s designers and copywriters.
The roadmap also features crowdsourced translations into regional Philippine languages, agentic AI workflows, and a commitment to keeping the codebase open source.
DICT undersecretary David Almirol Jr. announced that an IT community group chat would be launched soon and that the GitHub repository for Gov.PH would also be open.
He said the government would promote open-source technologies and continue to look for solutions developed by the IT community that could be adopted by the government. Almirol cited the efficiency of using existing technologies rather than having the government rebuild or duplicate them.
“The idea is to let the IT community participate in building better government systems and platforms,” he added.
He also mentioned the various eGov APIs that Filipino developers could use to build additional applications. He said the government would not work in isolation and expressed hope for “a better government that’s built by both the government and IT community.”
Almirol also announced that version 2 of the eGov platform is scheduled for release on November 9.
The BetterGov 2026 Summit marked the culmination of the movement’s first year, which was defined by partnerships among the government, civil society organizations, and citizen-led innovation initiatives.
It brought together experts and community members to discuss the challenges facing the country and explore opportunities to work together on solutions for a better Philippines.
