Lawmaker bats for higher pay for government cybersecurity experts

MANILA, Philippines — To keep the government’s information technology (IT) experts from going abroad or transferring to the private sector, their salaries should be increased, according to a lawmaker at the House of Representatives.

In a statement, Bohol 3rd District Rep. Kristine Alexie Tutor, who chairs the House committee on civil service and professional regulation, said there is a need to raise the salaries of cybersecurity experts from the “entry-level to supervisory and management positions.”

Tutor added that she would coordinate with Civil Service Commission Chairman Karlo Nograles for “exploratory discussions” on how the qualification standards, compensation and benefits of cybersecurity specialists and other IT specialists in government service can be improved.

“Perhaps, more plantilla positions can be created, especially for critical IT agencies and units of the national government, as well as regulatory agencies with jurisdiction over strategic or critical infrastructure,” Tutor said.

For the lawmaker, IT specialists are “nearly indispensable in any government office, but their compensation and benefits are not commensurate to the valued service that they provide.”

She emphasized that recruitment standards should be “strong enough” to make sure those who are hired in the government really “possess the knowledge, skills, attitude and values” to counter all forms of system breach.

Tutor proposed that those who have basic computer operation skills should get salary grades lower than Salary Grade (SG) 11.

At present, SG 11 salary ranges from Step 1 at P27,000 per month to P29,075 at Step 8.

Applicants who have “superior qualifications, relevant private sector experience and expertise,” however, should get higher SG levels such as SG 22 to 25.

SG 22 at Step 1 is at P71,151 a month while SG 25 ranges from P102,690 at Step 1 to P115,012 at Step 8.

“I believe these levels of compensation and the benefits in government service would be enough to entice homegrown cybersecurity experts,” Tutor said.