Strategic vision on women’s inclusion and gender equality in policy frameworks: The Philippine government recognizes the challenge of inclusive growth and of making public services, including the online services of government, inclusive. Recent e-government policies, the Philippine Digital Strategy and the e-government Master Plan align and harmonize policies recognizing the role of ICTs for women’s empowerment and outline plans of action to narrow the digital and gender divide. Robust scaffolding to the e-government policies and strategies is provided by the country’s advanced policies on gender equality and women’s rights. The government’s gender mainstreaming strategy has been institutionalized through the enactment of the Magna Carta of Women in 2009. Gender mainstreaming is a strategy that establishes gender-responsiveness as a key norm required to promote good governance. The Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Magna Carta of Women focuses on supporting, aligning, and consolidating existing efforts of government agencies including ICT and e-government strategies and activities like “Bottom up Budgeting”, that seek to further gender equality.
Critical challenges in e-government development: An analysis of performance of e-government in the Philippines demonstrates slow growth resulting from unclear e-government structure and leadership. As highlighted in the Medium Term ICT Harmonization Initiative (MITHI) of the e-government Master Plan, the key goals of e-government efforts are strengthening collaboration, interoperability, integrated services, and openness in governance. Similarly, the Philippine Digital Strategy (2011- 16) and the e-government Master Plan 2011-16 both consider the establishment of infrastructure and the development of required (governance) applications using interoperable and inclusive frameworks – to collaborate and share services among government agencies at national and local levels – as a starting point for e-government. Despite this stated vision, the government’s historical mode of functioning in silos continues. In the past, e-government and governance reform strategies only reached start-up stages and found it difficult to progress because of political and structural barriers and the lack of supportive policies and laws, as discussed in the previous section.
Gender gaps in e-government: Officials involved in e-government policy and programme development do not have strong gender perspectives. As a result, ICT policy development tends to become a largely gender-neutral exercise. This is particularly true for infrastructure policy frameworks, which tend to be urban-centric, exclusionary and gender blind, leaving behind marginalized sectors and vulnerable groups in remote rural areas with limited digital infrastructure and connectivity.
