Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Sonny Coloma today said there is no need to convert the Commission on Information and Communication Technology into a department.

Asked if the Aquino administration, which is active in the use of the Internet, is thinking of pushing for a bill creating a department of ICT since the CICT was created only by Executive Order 269 on January 12, 2004, Coloma said this is not a priority as this would escalate the administrative cost.

“Once our revenues reach a point where we can afford a department, then that is when we will do so. But for now, we are focusing on the need for CICT to operate as an office under the Office of the President to perform its mandate,” Coloma said in a news briefing Thursday.

Coloma stressed that government is not in a position to bear the higher level of administrative cost of creating a separate department.

Coloma said the PCOO has been filtering only profanity and the use of expletives in the website of President Aquino III, which is part of the Internet protocol.

“We have time and again emphasized that we have no desire and have not done an actual censorship or removal of negative comments because that would defeat the very purpose for which the website has been established, which is to build a credible feedback mechanism that allows people to express their sentiments” he said.

“How do we know how people feel if we stop their free expression. If we censor then people will not be encouraged to use that channel anymore and it will be a self-defeating proposition,” he added.

As to the hacking of the Philippine Information Agency website recently, Coloma said “there is room for improving the security of our websites. And that is what we are doing right now.”