ADMISSIBILITY OF ELECTRONIC EVIDENCE

It is very clear in the Electronic Commerce Act (ECA) that electronic evidence is already admissible, in the same way that physical evidence has always been admissible. I do not know if anyone else is using this term, but that is what I call “data parity”, meaning that electronic evidence has the same value as physical evidence. It has been many years since the ECA was passed, but believe it or not, there are still many government agencies that refuse to accept electronic evidence, and would still insist on requiring “hard copies” or physical evidence up to now. That is about the same as requiring people to “come to the office” in person (they call it face to face), instead of honoring video calls. How could we move forward with “digital transformation” if many of our government officials are still caught up (trapped) in the analog mindset? And how could we reduce the volume of traffic if they would always require “personal appearance” for everyone transacting with the government? As if there are not enough secure technologies to verify the identity of people? In theory, an email should have the same value as a chat message or a text message, but why do many government agencies require us to send them email messages even after sending them chat or text messages? And from my own experience, more than half of government agencies that have Facebook Messenger accounts do not follow up with customers after sending them auto-replies. IKE SENERES/01-08-2024