Information and Communications Technology Secretary Ivan Uy on Tuesday assured members of the Commission on Appointments of more seamless elections in the future.

During his confirmation hearing, Uy told the CA's Committee on Information and Communications Technology panel that his department will explore the possibility of online voting through the use of blockchain technology.

"We've seen that one of the limitations in the current system is that it's fed to a vote counting machine which is basically a scanner that interprets votes. Some of the criticisms that have been put in that are that it's basically a black box and there is difficulty in verifying the votes," he said.

"What we could provide in the future especially once we are able to deploy the national ID is perhaps to look at digital or online voting using blockchain, using encrypted technology, especially for our overseas voters," he added.

Uy stressed that online voting will ease the voting process for overseas voters who usually have to leave their work just to cast their votes.

CA Majority Leader Luis Ray Villafuerte also asked Uy about his personal stand on the issue with Smartmatic, the current software provider of automated polls in the country.

In response, Uy said he still wants Smartmatic to be the software provider for the automated elections should the company address several security concerns such as transparency.

"Transparency would need to have some improvement and that's where our hybrid suggestion comes in so that there is going to be another layer of check and balance," he said.

"In terms of our investments, we already have so much investment there but I think we should empower the Comelec now to be more involved actually in the elections instead of always contracting it out," he added.

The CA panel approved Uy's ad interim appointment and recommended his appointment to the plenary, however, it was rescheduled due to time constraints.