In a social media post dated 16 May 2023 (and the same published on their website), the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is seeking public input, comments, and suggestions for the draft of the National Cybersecurity Plan (NCP) 2023-2028.
The purpose of the NCP according to the draft document is as follows:
This draft document is intended for public consultations. The National Cybersecurity Plan 2023-2028 will be finalized after considering comments and suggestions from these consultations. Input may be shared by stakeholders by forwarding their comments to [email protected] The authors declare that the material being presented in this document is their original work and does not contain or include material taken from other copyrighted sources. If such material has been included, due acknowledgement is given and the authors or sources of work are cited. The authors, along with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) of the Republic of the Philippines, through the Cybersecurity Bureau (CSB), retain all copyrights and the right to use all or part of this article in their future works including future speeches, lectures, press releases, scholarly works, textbooks, and etc. Portions of this article may be referenced or published and attributed to the Cybersecurity Bureau, DICT.
DICT Will Not Be Entertaining Individual Comments & Suggestions
Contrary to the norms of having participatory governance, the DICT said it will not be entertaining individual comments and suggestions submitted to the NCP 2023-2028 draft. For one, there was no mention of the deadline by which interested parties may email their inputs to the draft document.
“The intention really is to publish this. You can find it on the DICT website, by the way, so that we can get informed and intelligent comments and suggestions. We are open to your suggestions. Unfortunately, we expect a lot of people commenting on it so we would not be entertaining individual comments, rather we would be entertaining comments coming in from industry organizations, or from specific companies or organizations. Please bear with us. We cannot possibly read all individual comments, especially if they are redundant,” according to Jeffrey Ian Dy, DICT Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity and Upskilling during an event in Makati City Monday (22 May 2023) where he was the keynote speaker.
When asked up to when the comment period closes, Asec. Dy replied, “Until end of May, but we can extend it for about a couple of weeks.”
Asec. Dy was the former Technology Manager (APAC) of Smartmatic and the Global IT Operations and Service Delivery of Ubiquity Global Services before joining the government (Bureau of Customs, TESDA, and now DICT).
Based on Republic Act (RA) 10844, the legislation that created the DICT, the agency is mandated to develop a National Cybersecurity Plan. According to the DICT website, the final version of the document is targeted to be published before the end of 2023.