Volunteer group BetterGov.PH to help build the Philippines' new official Gov.PH portal

The Philippine government's eGov team at DICT will co-develop the new official Gov.PH portal with BetterGov.PH, the volunteer civic tech group founded by Jason Torres, with the code set to be open. The partnership was announced at the BetterGov.PH Summit 2026 in Eastwood City; no launch date has been set for the portal, while eGov version 2 is due on 9 November.

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The Philippine government's official web portal, Gov.PH, is getting a rebuild with help from the volunteers behind BetterGov.PH. The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), through its eGov team, will co-develop the new national portal with BetterGov.PH, a volunteer civic tech group founded by tech founder Jason Torres. The partnership was announced at the BetterGov.PH Summit 2026 in Eastwood City, Quezon City.

Torres marked the news on Facebook. The public preview of his post reads: "Gov.ph, but make it Better 🎉 It is my honor to be a steward of this wonderful project. We're now currently working with the Egovph team to co-develop the incoming Official Portal of the Republic of..."

Torres started BetterGov.PH to build a better Gov.PH portal, and NewsBytes.PH reports he was inspired by his experience with government websites overseas. After the 2025 corruption scandals in the Philippines, the project grew into a movement that NewsBytes.PH says now has more than 5,000 volunteers, including developers, designers, data scientists, policy advocates and researchers. According to Tech Watch PH, Torres said the partnership followed about 12 months of discussions, and that BetterGov.PH will keep running its transparency and other civic tech projects independently.

The code is meant to be open. DICT Undersecretary David Almirol Jr. announced that the GitHub repository for Gov.PH would be opened, NewsBytes.PH reported, and BitPinas said the portal's source code is scheduled for public release in the coming weeks. "The idea is to let the IT community participate in building better government systems and platforms," Almirol said, as quoted by NewsBytes.PH.

Plans outlined at the summit include a national design system for government websites, translations into Filipino and regional languages, and AI features to help people find information and navigate government processes. Almirol also said version 2 of the eGov platform is due for release on 9 November. That date is for eGov, not for the new portal: Tech Watch PH reports that the official launch date of Gov.PH has yet to be announced.

For Filipinos living in New Zealand and Australia, Gov.PH is the Philippine government's official online front door. Torres described Gov.PH as the nation's digital front door not just for Filipinos but also for the global community, according to NewsBytes.PH, and Tech Watch PH says the collaboration aims to give Filipinos a single digital entry point for government information and eventually public services.