BAGUIO CITY, 9 to 13 December 2019 – The Special Area for Agricultural Development (SAAD) Program enhanced its National Farmers Database System during the 2nd Assessment and Planning Workshop held at Venus Parkview Hotel.
The system, which contains the profiles and other important details of the farmers and associations who are beneficiaries of the program, was developed by the SAAD National Program Management Office (NPMO) Information Technologists (ITs) in 2018.
SAAD Program Director Myer Mula emphasized the importance of the farmers’ profiles as a basis to measure the program’s impact on poverty alleviation.
During the assessment, the accomplishments of each SAAD implementing regions in terms of the profiled and geotagged farmers were evaluated.
The major issues laid out were incomplete data profiles of the farmers and web server glitches, some of which were resolved during the workshop. Concerns about profiling forms were also brought up. SAAD NPMO IT Head Marvin Segovia said that the SAAD Program will still adopt the forms of the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Agriculture (RSBSA).
Count duplication was also a problem that is why SAAD NPMO ITs Randy Ocampo and Thoburn Gustilo continuously enhance the database system with new interfaces and options included for easier navigation, encoding, and filtering. By the end of 2019, the database hopes to be fully operational and internally accessible as the Regional Program Management Support Offices committed to complete the submission of data.
A workshop with the SAAD Area Coordinators (ACs) and ITs is set to happen in the first semester of 2020 to settle concerns regarding profile data collection and submission. ACs will profile and geotag the farmers while ITs concern is to consolidate, encode, and maintain the information gathered. ###
Writer: Jhomai Canlas, SAAD Public Relations and Communications Officer
