Caintic takes over as DICT acting secretary

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang has appointed erstwhile Department of Information and Communications Technology Undersecretary Emmanuel Rey Caintic as acting secretary of the DICT, presumably for the last six months of the Duterte administration.

Caintic, Undersecretary for digital Philippines, has led the DICT’s flagship programs such as the agency’s share in the multi-agency effort to draw up the policy formulation and implementation for the common tower policy and the streamlining and speeding up of the permit process for fiber optic cables. The overseer of the vaccine certificates or Vaxcert.ph program was appointed to the DICT’s top post in an acting capacity last Thursday.

The appointment of Caintic comes more than two months after fthe resignation of former ICT secretary Gregorio Honasan II, who filed his certificate of candidacy for the Senate last October.

Caintic was among the appointees to the DICT that came with the appointment of Honasan in July 2019, initially being appointed as ICT assistant secretary and then rising to undersecretary.

Before his appointment in the DICT, Caintic had worked as chief technology officer of the Philippine Stock Exchange in 2015. He had also served as an IT consultant to the United States Agency for International Development.

Caintic has a degree in physics with computer engineering from the Ateneo de Manila University.