Latest news with #E-GovernmentAct
GMA Network
6 days ago
- Business
- GMA Network
DEPDev urges Congress to pass 7 priority bills before session ends on June 13
The newly-created Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DEPDev) has called on Congress to pass seven priority measures crucial for connectivity and healthcare before the 19th Congress officially ends on June 13. In a statement, DEPDev Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said the seven bills include: Amendments to the Foreign Investors' Long-Term Lease Act Rationalization of the Mining Fiscal Regime Amendments to the Universal Health Care Act E-Government Act / E-Governance Act Konektadong Pinoy Act Establishing the Virology Institute of the Philippines and Blue Economy Act. All these measures are pending the approval of the bicameral conference committee composed of contingent from the House of Representatives and the Senate. 'We thank the leadership of both the Senate and the House of Representatives for their dedication in crafting sound, strategic, coherent, and responsive policies for our country. We remain hopeful that the remaining set of bills will be passed just in time before the end of the 19th Congress,' Balisacan said. 'We look forward, in particular, to the Konektadong Pinoy Act - a critical bill that DEPDev has been championing for some time. We firmly believe this measure holds immense promise in transforming the lives of all Filipinos by ensuring reliable and affordable Internet access,' he added. The Konektadong Pinoy Act aims to improve digital connectivity in the country and provide affordable internet access for every Filipino by enhancing market accessibility, upgrading physical and digital infrastructure, and enabling full participation of individuals and businesses in the digital economy. The 19th Congress will resume on June 2 for a six-day session before it adjourns sine die on June 13. The 20th Congress is set to convene its first session day on July 28. The LEDAC serves as the primary consultative and advisory body to the President, ensuring synchronized executive development planning and congressional budgeting. For the 19th Congress, the Council identified 64 bills expected to advance the country's socioeconomic and development goals. Senate President Francis Escudero earlier said the Congress needs to focus on passing these priority measures first before the Senate convenes as Senate impeachment court for the trial of Vice President Sara Dutetre. Escudero has rescheduled the reading of impeachment charges against the Vice President from June 2 to 11, or the last day of session since Congress only conducts plenary sessions from Mondays to Wednesdays. Duterte was impeached by the House of Representatives on February 5, with over 200 congressmen endorsing the complaint against her. She was accused of betrayal of public trust, culpable violation of the Constitution, graft and corruption, and other high crimes mainly over alleged misuse of around P612.5 million worth of confidential funds and threatening to kill President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., First Lady Liza, and the President's cousin and Speaker, Leyte First District Rep. Martin Romualdez. The Vice President, for her part, said she is looking forward to her impeachment trial in the upcoming 20th Congress because she 'wants a bloodbath." —Llanesca Panti/AOL, GMA Integrated News
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In DOGE Lawsuit, Judge Declines To Block White House Emailing Federal Employees
Unnamed government employees suffered a setback in their legal efforts to stop the White House from emailing executive branch employees. On Monday, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the plaintiffs' request to block the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) from using a "government-wide email system" established by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to communicate with all government employees. D.C. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss was unpersuaded that the anonymous plaintiffs, who are all using the pseudonym Jane Doe, suffered a serious enough injury to justify their request for a temporary restraining order. "This is not a case in which Plaintiffs seek to protect highly sensitive personal information, like tax records or sensitive medical files. Instead, they seek to protect their work email addresses," wrote Moss. Over the past several weeks, nearly a dozen lawsuits have been filed challenging DOGE's access to federal government record systems, mostly on claims that this access violates various procedural requirements found in federal privacy regulations. The Jane Does sued OPM in late January on the grounds that the White House office let DOGE staffers set up its government-wide email system without producing a required "privacy impact statement" as mandated by the 2002 E-Government Act. The plaintiffs alleged that their personnel data was made vulnerable to hacks as a result. It was this email system that the Trump administration used to issue its "fork in the road" deferred resignation program that offered federal employees eight months' severance pay if they resigned via email. (That since-closed program is also the subject of legal challenges.) In a nod to the online nature of the case, their original complaint cites an anonymous, since-deleted Reddit post about the process by which the email system was set up. More recent court filings also lean on a podcast interview in which a privacy expert evaluates the potential for data breaches as a result of the new email system. OPM has asked the court to dismiss the case on the grounds that the E-Government Act did not cover information collected for internal government operations, and even if it did the agency had subsequently produced a privacy impact statement. Additionally, OPM argued the plaintiffs' assertion that their work emails were at risk of hacks because of an inadequate privacy impact statement was too vague to give them standing to sue. In his order rejecting Does' request for a temporary restraining order, Moss appeared to side with OPM on most of its points, including the plaintiffs' lack of standing. "It is not the job of the federal courts to police the security of the information systems in the executive branch, just as it is not the job of the federal courts to police the internal notations on consumers' credit reports," wrote Moss. Moss also raised problems with the evidence plaintiffs had cited about the potential for data breaches, particularly their cited podcast interview with a security expert who had given a more mixed appraisal of the hacking risks posed by OPM's email list. "The evidence provided by the podcast, therefore, is mixed at best," wrote Moss. The upshot is that OPM can continue to use its government-wide email system to email government employees while the case is ongoing. The post In DOGE Lawsuit, Judge Declines To Block White House Emailing Federal Employees appeared first on
