President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has named Social Security System (SSS) president and chief executive Robert Joseph de Claro as the new secretary of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT). Marcos announced the appointment on October 13 and said he had already signed de Claro’s ad interim appointment.
De Claro replaces Henry Aguda, whose resignation Marcos said he accepted during a media interview in Singapore on Sunday. The new secretary took his oath before the President alongside Lino Cayetano, the incoming head of the Presidential Communications Office. Marcos made the announcement after swearing in newly elected officers of the Malacañang media groups, and he pointed to de Claro’s background in the digital economy as a reason for the choice.
De Claro joined the SSS in January 2023 and chairs its Information and Technology Collection Committee. He also sat on the Union Bank board as the SSS representative and chaired the board of Union Digital Bank, the lender’s digital banking arm. That mix of pension-fund management and digital banking gives him direct experience of running large public systems and the financial technology that sits behind them. The appointment moves the head of a state pension fund, whose committee work covered technology and contribution collection, into the job of setting the government’s digital agenda. Salceda’s comments suggest artificial intelligence policy will be one of the early areas of focus.
The appointment drew quick support from within the administration. Joey Salceda, chief of the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office and a former congressman and economic planning secretary, called de Claro a longtime friend from the private sector. He described him as a computer science graduate with wide experience in startups, and credited his time at the SSS with improving the agency’s fiscal sustainability while also raising pensions. Salceda said he looked forward to working with him on digital transformation and AI policy.
De Claro takes over a department responsible for national connectivity and government digital services, with about two years left in the Marcos administration. Cayetano, a former general manager of state broadcaster PTV, becomes the sixth person to lead the communications office under Marcos. Both appointments arrive as the government pushes to bring more public services online, giving the new DICT chief a short window to show results before the administration’s term ends.
