Why doesn’t our beloved Philippines have its own data center? Bagong Henerasyon Party-list Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy raised this question—an appalling concern but rarely the star of the show.

During a late August hearing of the House Committee on Appropriations, Rep. Herrera-Dy flat out asked why we still rely on foreign cloud services, like Singapore and the United States, to host our government data.

It’s honestly a fair question. Having your landlord cozying up in your house while you pay rent is unimaginable. That’s what it feels like for the Philippines, with our essential and sensitive data floating around in the cloud, dependent on another country’s “generosity.”

Department of Information and Communications Technology Undersecretary David L. Almirol Jr. tossed in his two cents, saying the government currently has no data center — just co-locating.

Co-location sounds fancy, but it’s just a nice way of saying we’re squatting in someone else’s digital property. The DICT admitted that its budget is a measly P325 million for managing over 600 of the 1,277 government cloud systems.

If you’ve ever tried to feed a family on a shoestring budget, you know how tough that can be. And if we’re looking to digitize government operations, that budget will not cut it.

“Additional funding would be necessary for us to meet this growing demand,” DICT Secretary Ivan John E. Uy said, noting that the DICT is tasked with managing the National Government data center cloud services program, for which P325 million was allocated. The data center budget, meanwhile, was set at P425 million.

The DICT aims for P15 billion for the Philippines’ first data center, which is still a work in progress. A P2.3 billion proposal was submitted, but only P750 million was approved for management.

Evidently, the DICT is building a dream house but living in a tent. Can we even call it progress when we’re still plodding along while our data is managed elsewhere? As we march into the digital age and the demand for data surges, the last thing we should do is let it get swept under the rug.

This mishandling of funds for critical infrastructure is part of larger issues in the country. There’s been talk about how billions have been spent on cash dole-outs, which encourages a culture of mendicancy. People are given a fishing rod but are told they’ll always get fish delivered rather than investing in sustainable solutions that will help people stand on their own feet.

With their penchant for extravagant travel, our beloved government officials seem to have mistaken our taxes for their piggy banks. Hard-working Filipinos foot the bill only to see their leaders jet off to somewhere that often yield more social media selfies than solutions. Trips worldwide abound while roads double as obstacle courses, and our healthcare system is perpetually underfunded.

Let’s not forget the flood control projects that either don’t exist or are so subpar they prove useless when the rain starts pouring. We can only assume that a sizable portion of the budget is being siphoned off through commissions. We need these resources to serve their purpose, not line the pockets of a few.

What a waste of resources when we could be investing in a reliable data center that would serve us for years and enhance data security, efficiency, and digital independence.

If we continue to pretend that our data isn’t crucial to our national security and progress, it’s a classic case of throwing “good money after bad.”

In a nutshell, we can’t afford to play the role of the digital squatter any longer. We need our own data center to safeguard our information and empower our government to operate effectively — it’s a digital necessity.

Instead of ineffectively investing cash in disjointed projects that vanish like sugar in hot coffee, we need to invest in technologies and infrastructure. At the end of the day, this is about us, about our data, and about securing our place in the digital world.