On October 21, the Office of the Ombudsman ordered a six-month preventive suspension without pay against Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary David Almirol Jr.
It cited findings of conflict of interest: the eGov project, which Almirol led, awarded contracts worth P1.55 billion to a company that eventually subcontracted work to Multisys Technologies Corporation, a company he founded.
The suspension order came almost a year after Rappler exposed the issue in an investigative report published in December 2025.
The report was triggered by a DICT internal audit report that Rappler got hold of. To get to the bottom of the issue, we spent months scouring through corporate information and financial disclosures submitted by Multisys to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as DICT procurement records. We interviewed numerous sources, including Almirol himself.
Hello! I am Gemma Mendoza, head for strategic programs and one of the geeks minding our technology coverage here at Rappler.
Apart from this story, we have also been closely monitoring the circus at the DICT, including:
- the clumsy effort to go after Discord and platforms used by nihilist violent extremists to prey on kids;
- the exit of DICT Secretary Henry Aguda; and
- the appointment of the former Social Security System chief Robert Joseph de Claro.
This is part of an effort in Rappler to cover technology and platforms from the perspective of public welfare, rights, safety, and accountability.
To maximize our energies, we do less reviews of the latest gadgets and gizmos and do more stories that help the public understand how innovations and developments in technology — and how the policies and actions of governments, including our own government, in relation to this sector — could affect their lives.
For instance, an investigative report we recently published uncovered how a sprawling online community of 430,000 members abuses women by gamifying the non-consensual disclosure of their intimate moments. The report also exposed gaps in laws that allow such platforms to flourish.
We will continue scrutinizing developments in Silicon Valley and the giant companies behind these technologies. But we will be looking at these from the perspective of citizens from the global majority whose voices and perspectives are often taken as an afterthought in a world dominated by the tech titans.
We feel this is critical because digital technologies have become so pervasive that it is virtually impossible for the ordinary individual to evade them. From the moment we wake up in the morning to when we go to sleep — and even as we sleep — we take these technologies with us.
In workshops we conduct across the country, I often joke that our phones and the digital platforms we use know more about us than the people closest to us.
This is the reason our newsroom’s technology and platforms cluster decided to revive our #EverydayTech chat room in the Muni tab of Rappler’s app.
We realized that while technologies and platforms are so much a part of our lives, very few people really understand how they work.
For instance, Digital 2027, the latest report by creative marketing agency We Are Social, shows that 3.24 billion individuals or nearly 40% of the global population already use generative AI tools each month.
However, few people realize that, beyond the seeming magic, generative AI is basically a tool that processes huge amounts of data scraped — often without permission — from various websites all over the internet.
Few also realize that when they talk to that friendly chatbot, they are in fact potentially giving away precious sensitive personal information which could be abused and used against them.
These are among the things we discuss daily, at 10 am and 4 pm in the #EverydayTech chat room.
You might ask, what does this have to do with the story on Almirol and the DICT?
Simple: the DICT is primarily responsible for promoting the Philippine government’s national information and communications technology (ICT) development agenda. It is supposed to ensure that Filipinos benefit from emerging technologies while also ensuring that our people are not being harmed by such technologies.
Our coverage intends to not just scrutinize how the technology platforms are behaving and operating, but also how various responsible agencies of government tasked to protect our interests are responding to such developments.
We invite you to collaborate with us in this journey.
Jump in whenever you can and join the conversation in the #EverydayTech channel. Do invite others to join as well.
And if you have leads on stories involving platforms and government agencies that are supposed to be regulating them, send us tips through investigative@rappler.com.
If you have the wherewithal, do support our investigations by joining Rappler+ or by giving whatever you can to our crowdfunding effort.
We are living in a world where technology is no longer optional. It has invaded our homes and each of our personal spaces. Let us explore, understand, and investigate how it affects us together. – Rappler.com
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