Philippines AI Governance: What Executive Order 131 Creates

Key Takeaway

• 📜 The order: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed Executive Order No. 131 on November 12, 2026, adopting the AI Governance Framework and creating the National Artificial Intelligence Council — a 12-seat inter-agency body chaired by the Executive Secretary that reports directly to the President.
• ⚖️ Zero new penalties: the order attaches no license, registration, fee or fine to building or using AI. Philippine companies keep operating under existing laws; Philippines AI governance starts with coordination, not a criminal code.
• 🗓️ The clocks are running: an interim secretariat within 30 days of effectivity, quarterly agency updates on a DICT-run platform, council reports to the President within 30 days after each quarter, and a framework review at least every two years.
• 🌏 The executive moved first: the Philippines still has no comprehensive AI statute, Malaysia’s AI law remains a bill, and Singapore runs a voluntary framework. The measurable next steps are the five technical working groups and their action plans — not the signature itself.

Eighteen months after approving the Philippines’ first national AI strategy, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has attached an operating structure to it. Executive Order No. 131, signed on November 12, 2026, adopts the AI Governance Framework as the national strategic guide and creates the National Artificial Intelligence Council to carry it out — the first whole-of-government body Philippines AI governance has ever been organized around. The order is deliberately narrow: it coordinates the executive branch, it penalizes nothing, and it leaves every sector regulator in charge of its own industry. Read against a Congress that has not passed a single comprehensive AI bill, a Malaysia whose AI law is still in the legislature, and a Singapore that governs by framework rather than statute, the order is the Philippines’ answer to a regional race — delivered with a fast clock: secretariat in 30 days, quarterly reports, framework review every two years.

Every detail of Philippines AI governance below comes from the order’s own text on the Official Gazette, the Palace’s announcement, and the record of the planning that produced it.

The New Map of Philippines AI Governance

The order is short — five pages, twelve sections — and its architecture layers on top of decisions already made. The preamble recites the chain: Section 10 of Article XIV of the Constitution, Chapter 8 of the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028, the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy for the Philippines (NAIS-PH) approved in May 2025, and the AI Governance Framework itself, which the National Innovation Council had approved as the national policy framework for responsible AI development, deployment and use. EO 131 does two things only: it adopts that framework “as the national strategic guide for policy formulation, regulatory coordination, institutional development, capacity-building,” and it creates the mechanism to execute it.

The mechanism is the National Artificial Intelligence Council (NAIC). It is an inter-agency body, not a regulator, it coordinates, facilitates and monitors implementation, and it reports directly to the President. The Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DEPDev) serves as its Secretariat; the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) builds and runs its monitoring platform. The council coordinates with the National Innovation Council “on matters falling within their respective mandates,” so the innovation-policy body keeps its role while Philippines AI governance gains an execution arm.

Palace Press Officer Claire Castro announced the signing on November 14, the same day the Gazette published the order, saying the measure seeks to provide a “unified direction” and clear governance for the development and use of AI in the country. The framework’s four elements, ethics and principles, standards and assurance, a risk-based policy toolkit, and enabling resources: are reproduced in the order and now carry executive weight for the first time.

What the Framework Actually Says

Element one is Ethics and Principles: AI development, deployment and use shall be guided by transparency and explainability, security and safety, accountability and integrity, human centricity, fairness and equity, and sustainable development. These are guiding principles, not enforceable obligations: and penalties are conspicuously absent from the twelve sections.

Element two is Standards and Assurance: technical standards, testing and evaluation, conformity assessment, interoperability and “other assurance mechanisms” supporting responsible, safe, secure and trustworthy AI. This is the piece DEPDev Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon had already connected to the private sector before the signature: a framework can set the standard, but someone else has to certify against it.

Element three is the Risk-based Policy Toolkit, the order’s most consequential sentence for anyone expecting rigid rules: governance measures “shall be proportionate to the nature, context, and level of risk,” and may include general and sector-specific guidelines, AI impact assessments, regulatory sandboxes, a review of existing laws, and coordinated complaint and grievance mechanisms. The same section nails the division of labor, “existing sector regulators shall continue to exercise their respective mandates under applicable laws.” It is the sentence that tells a founder what Philippines AI governance will feel like: graded response, not a wall.

Element four is Enabling Resources, the build side: strengthen institutions, data, research and development, capabilities, infrastructure, and demand generation. This is where the order stops being a statement of values and becomes a work plan.

Inside the National Artificial Intelligence Council

The council’s composition maps every institution AI will touch. The Executive Secretary chairs it: the Palace’s gatekeeper, whoever holds the office: signaling that coordination sits at the top of the bureaucracy rather than inside any one department. The DEPDev Secretary is vice chairperson. The nine government heads are the Secretaries of Information and Communications Technology, Science and Technology, Trade and Industry, Finance, Education, Labor and Employment, and Budget and Management, plus the CHED Chairperson and the TESDA Director General. One private-sector representative completes the twelve seats of Philippines AI governance’s new council, appointed by the President from a list of nominees submitted by reputable business groups or associations, for a three-year term with one reappointment.

That single private seat deserves attention. Edillon, briefing reporters on November 10, days before the signature, described the council’s job in operational terms: “That’s the role of the council. Just to make sure that the strategies and the policies that have been identified in that governance framework, that it will be put in place.” She flagged openness about the design of the instrument itself: “We don’t know yet how the final EO will come out. But our proposal is to have a TWG for each of these pillars.” The signed order answered with five working groups, not the six her briefing proposed, and left private-sector representation inside those groups to the council, which must ensure “appropriate representation” from government, the private sector, academe and civil society.

Authority flows downward with precision. Council members may send permanent alternates, rank not lower than Assistant Secretary, “fully authorized to decide for and on behalf of their principals”, so the body never stalls on schedules. It may also invite other agencies, local government units, GOCCs, state universities and colleges, the private sector, academe and civil society into its meetings as resource persons.

How the Machine Runs: Five Working Groups, One Platform, Four Clocks

Section 3 assigns the council eight duties, and three matter most for anyone tracking delivery. It must align government AI programs with the framework and “eliminate duplication.” It identifies and facilitates the resolution of policy, regulatory, institutional, resource and other bottlenecks. And it recommends policy, regulatory, fiscal, institutional and legislative measures to the President “necessary to accelerate AI adoption and safeguard the rights and welfare of workers and learners affected by AI-driven transitions”, the order’s only direct statement on AI and jobs, pointing straight at the statute the council may itself help draft.

Section 4 constitutes the five technical working groups. Each must produce action plans that identify responsible and supporting agencies, deliverables, timelines and milestones, resource requirements, and key performance indicators:

The Infrastructure row is the one planners in every province will read twice. The TWG must align action plans with the Philippines AI+ Infrastructure Masterplan 2026-2033 and “integrate the energy and water requirements of AI infrastructure into national resource planning”, language that puts data centers on the same resource ledger as the households and factories already drawing from the grid and the aquifer.

Section 5 builds the reporting loop: DICT must establish and maintain a digital monitoring and reporting platform tracking deliverables, milestones, KPIs and implementation status; all concerned agencies must submit and regularly update the required information quarterly; the NAIC, through DEPDev, leads overall monitoring; and the council submits to the President, within 30 days from the end of each quarter, a report on the status and progress of implementation. Section 6 adds the audit rhythm, the council reviews the framework at least once every two years, or earlier if significant technological, regulatory or market developments warrant it. On this cadence, Philippines AI governance is auditable by quarter and reviewable by year two.

What the Order Deliberately Does Not Do

The gaps are deliberate policy, not missed duties. Attorney Yasser R. Aureada, writing a section-by-section explainer of the order, stated the boundary plainly: the council’s instrument “is not a statute passed by Congress, and it carries no penalties.” He counts three structural protections for business: the order directs national government agencies and GOCCs and merely encourages local governments, the private sector, academe and civil society; it sets no license, registration, fee or penalty for companies that build or use AI; and existing sector regulators stay in their seats.

Nothing in the text creates a Bureau of Artificial Intelligence Systems, an Artificial Intelligence Development Authority, or any of the agencies Congress members have proposed across dozens of bills. The council may issue implementing guidelines, and the toolkit names sector-specific guidelines and AI impact assessments: but guideline-issuing and enforcement are different powers, and the order keeps the first while leaving the second where it already lives, inside existing mandates. That is the quiet workhorse of this issuance: Philippines AI governance leans on the rules already in force, sharpened by coordination.

Even the framework document itself remains partly out of view. The order adopts it and DEPDev confirmed its approval by the National Innovation Council, but the Gazette’s resources for the entry carry only the order’s own PDF; the framework’s full public text had not been posted alongside it as of this writing. Edillon cited third-party certification as the kind of private-sector role she expects, and the order’s standards element leaves room for exactly that.

The Statute the Philippines Still Does Not Have

The executive branch moving first on Philippines AI governance, inside a legislative vacuum it explicitly leaves open, is the story’s hardest edge. As of its most recent November 2026 review, the tracker LexLint records no comprehensive AI-transparency, AI-risk-obligations, AI-training-data or AI-governance statute, the Data Privacy Act of 2012, applied to AI systems processing personal data through the National Privacy Commission’s Advisory 2024-04 of December 19, 2024, remains the closest enforcement layer running on an existing statute.

Congress has not lacked activity. Senate Bill No. 25, the Artificial Intelligence Regulation Act, was filed on July 2, 2025 and remains with committee. The Foundation for Media Alternatives’ tally of the 20th Congress also counts an AI Regulation Act from Senator Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada, deepfake bills from Senators Bam Aquino and Robinhood Padilla, Representative Zia Alonto Adiong’s AI-Aided Criminality Liability Act, and Representative Ma. Nina Francesca Lacson’s National Artificial Intelligence Code. The House ICT committee received a consolidated regulatory framework measure, HB 11137: which would create a National AI Regulatory Authority and an AI multi-stakeholder advisory council, on September 9, 2026, with the companion HB 11138 behind it. Our reporting has tracked this bill flow, including the risk-ranking bill that entered the chamber in August.

The order sits in that landscape as an instrument with a different speed and a different ceiling. An executive order takes effect the day it is published; a statute takes years. But an executive order can also be superseded, and every one of its structures, the council, the TWGs, the platform, lives or dies by budget lines and appointments rather than law. Section 3(e) hands the council its own answer: it must recommend legislative measures to the President. Whether Congress produces an AI Act this legislature or the next decides if the country gets a statute that inherits this architecture, or a framework that ages in place.

Where the Philippines Now Stands in Southeast Asia

Place the order beside its neighbors and the region’s three governance routes become visible. Malaysia is pursuing legislation: the status of its AI governance bill, obligations, frameworks and registration expectations it would carry, remains in the political process, tracked in our Malaysia AI law status guide. Singapore went the opposite way: no omnibus AI statute but a growing stack of voluntary frameworks, including the world’s first framework written explicitly for agentic AI systems. The Philippines has now split the difference, no statute, but a whole-of-government framework with named agencies, named working groups and quarterly reporting to the President. Philippines AI governance now occupies the middle route: directive enough to bind the bureaucracy, short of statute.

Sequencing matters on the regional table. The Philippines chairs ASEAN in 2026 and is hosting the summit this month; President Marcos told ASEAN partners the grouping must harness AI to drive regional growth and prosperity. A framework signed as world leaders converged on Manila gives the chairmanship a working answer to the question its delegates are actually asking, not what ASEAN should do about AI, but what each member is building at home. Our look at the ASEAN AI governance push frames where the guidance started.

The country-by-country picture sharpens with every move: our Southeast Asia regulation guide now includes a Philippines column that reads coordination-first, not prohibition-first. For practitioners tracking Philippines AI governance against its neighbors, the difference is visible now: Singapore’s guidance is detailed and voluntary, Malaysia’s rules wait on a bill, and the Philippines’ expectations are official but unenforced.

What It Means for Filipino Workers, Freelancers and Small Businesses

For workers, three parts of the order touch the job market directly. The seats: Labor and Employment, TESDA and CHED sit on the council, and the Capabilities working group must produce a national AI competency and digital workforce development program, AI and digital education and literacy across sectors, and scholarship programs supporting AI research, development and use. The mandate: the council must recommend measures safeguarding the rights and welfare of workers and learners affected by AI-driven transitions, the first time an executive instrument of this breadth has tied AI deployment to worker protection in national policy terms. The pace: every quarter, a document lands on the President’s desk saying what the working groups delivered.

For freelancers and online sellers, Philippines AI governance changes the compliance landscape less than the competitive one. There is nothing to register, pay or fear from the order itself. The near-term effect runs upstream: if the Demand Generation working group opens financing windows or PPPs reaching MSMEs and startups, the small agency or consultancy can compete under a framework readable in five pages, a contrast worth weighing against the ASEAN Digital Economy Pact’s trade-side track, which moves through the same economy.

For business owners, the readiness checklist the order’s text implies is short, and it is not compliance. Map where AI already touches operations, from customer service to hiring to credit decisions. Check those uses against the laws already in force, the Data Privacy Act continues to govern AI systems processing personal data, and the sector’s own regulator keeps its mandate. Assign someone to watch for the council’s guidelines and new issuances from the sector regulator: third-party certification is the assurance mechanism Edillon expects the private sector to fill. Keep a record of how AI-assisted decisions are made and reviewed, because transparency and accountability are principles the framework states now and may operationalize later. And if a structural say matters, the route runs through business groups: they nominate the council’s one private-sector member.

The Watch List: Six Signals of a Real Machine

Executive orders in this field succeed or fail after the signature, and the order lists its own checkpoints. Within 30 days of effectivity, DEPDev’s interim secretariat should exist. The council’s first organizational act should convene the five TWGs, naming lead agencies and private-sector participants. The private-sector appointee should be named from business-group nominees, the public’s first read on whom the President picked. The DICT monitoring platform should appear with its first quarterly agency updates. The first quarterly report to the President, due within 30 days after the current quarter closes, will reveal the action plans’ deliverables and KPIs. And the implementing guidelines, when they arrive, will show whether “proportionate” governance means light-touch or something closer to the risk-register approach Congress keeps proposing in statute form.

Missed checkpoints will be visible too, because the order forces its own reporting structure to publish them. That is either a design worth copying or the first real measurement of whether the country’s institutions can move this fast. Readers following Philippines AI governance should score both possibilities on the same calendar.

Frequently Asked Questions About Philippines AI Governance

Is Executive Order 131 a law?

No. It is an executive order, an instrument the President issues under his constitutional power of control over the executive branch, effective immediately upon publication. It adopts the AI Governance Framework as the national strategic guide and creates the National Artificial Intelligence Council. It is not a statute passed by Congress, and it carries no penalties; a council duty is to recommend legislative measures to the President. In the current structure of Philippines AI governance, the coordination body is executive; the enforcement layer is still law-by-law.

Does EO 131 regulate my business today?

Not directly. The order sets no license, registration, fee or penalty for building or using AI, and existing sector regulators keep their mandates. AI use remains governed by rules already in force, the Data Privacy Act of 2012 for personal data, applied to AI systems by NPC Advisory 2024-04, and the sector’s own regulator. Guidelines and future statutes may add obligations; today, the order adds coordination, not compliance.

Who chairs the National AI Council?

The Executive Secretary chairs it, with the DEPDev Secretary as vice chairperson and DEPDev as the council’s Secretariat. Twelve seats in total: the chair, the vice chair, nine government heads, the DICT, DOST, DTI, DOF, DepEd, DOLE and DBM secretaries, the CHED Chairperson and the TESDA Director General, and one private-sector representative appointed by the President from business-group nominees for a three-year term with one reappointment. That is the twelve-seat structure Philippines AI governance now runs on.

What are the four elements of the AI Governance Framework?

Ethics and principles (transparency and explainability, security and safety, accountability and integrity, human centricity, fairness and equity, sustainable development); standards and assurance (technical standards, testing and evaluation, conformity assessment, interoperability); a risk-based policy toolkit (proportionate governance including guidelines, AI impact assessments, regulatory sandboxes, review of existing laws and complaint mechanisms, with sector regulators keeping their mandates); and enabling resources (institutions, data and R&D, capabilities, infrastructure, demand generation).

When did it take effect, and what happens first?

The order takes effect immediately upon publication; the Official Gazette entry was posted November 14, 2026. First deadline: DEPDev’s interim secretariat, within 30 days of effectivity. Then the council convenes its five technical working groups, the DICT monitoring platform comes online with quarterly agency updates, and the council files its first quarterly report to the President within 30 days after the end of the quarter.

How does the Philippines compare with Malaysia and Singapore?

Three routes: Malaysia drives governance through legislation, with its AI governance bill still in the political process; Singapore relies on detailed voluntary frameworks, including one for agentic AI; the Philippines now runs a framework through executive action, named agencies, five working groups, quarterly presidential reporting, while the enforcement statute waits. Philippines AI governance is the region’s first framework-first, council-run model built on an executive instrument rather than a bill or a guideline.

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