October 12, 2014

Manila, Philippines–For a faster and more efficient reporting and data sharing within the Department of Agriculture, the DA-Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP) has developed a web-based management information system (MIS) for use of concerned DA family agencies.

Pre-testing of the web-based MIS has already been conducted in regions IV-A, 8, and Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) by a team from PRDP along with the DA’s Management Information Division (MID) to get feedback from the targeted users as well as gather additional information to further improve the system.

The initiative was started after Undersecretary for Operations and PRDP Director Emerson Palad saw the problem in submission of data from the regions to the Central Office.

“The DA Regional Field Units (RFUs) need to submit multiple reports of the same information to various offices in Central Office, such as the Operations and Planning Service, and even the Office of the Secretary,” added Palad.

PRDP Deputy Project Director Arnel de Mesa said the system which is developed by a team from PRDP aims to allow regions, bureaus, and attached agencies to submit their targets and accomplishment reports to various offices within the agency through the Internet.

“This way, data submission within the agency is more efficient, faster, and less prone to mistakes,” added De Mesa.

He also said that the data will be accessible within the DA, and may eventually be available to the public.

The group, composed of Monitoring and Evaluation and Geo-mapping and Governance Units of the PRDP and MID, was tasked to develop the system and pre-test to various regions, bureaus and attached agencies within DA to gather feedback and suggestions from the prospective users.

DA-RFU 8 Director Bernadette San Juan sees the necessity for the technology especially with the continuous rehabilitation efforts in Tacloban after it was hit by typhoon Yolanda late last year.

“We particularly need this technology especially in gathering and collaborating data relative to targets and accomplishments we made so far in respect to Yolanda rehabilitation.”

CAR Director Marilyn Sta. Catalina is also optimistic in utilizing the said technology. She said that data which will be collected using the web-based MIS can be used for analysis, stressing the importance of submitting reliable information from the regions.

Data will be encoded by regional offices, which will then be processed and posted by the system on the Web. This way, the data can be accessed by DA officials and employees anytime, and anywhere with Internet connection.

De Mesa, who advocated for the web-based MIS stressed the need for pre-testing before utilizing the new tool.

The PRDP team has also pre-tested the system to DA attached bureaus and agencies including Agricultural Training Institute, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, and Bureau of Soils and Water Management, which are the first to express their interest to participate in the web-based MIS.

After the completion of the system, the team has now started training in different clusters scheduled as follows: Mindanao (October 7-9), Luzon A&B (October 13-17), and Visayas (October 20-22).

De Mesa said that the said web-based system is a milestone in the PRDP, which has already introduced transparency initiatives through technology like geo-tagging and geo-mapping. ### (Cath Nanta, InfoACE NPCO)