DAR starts digitalization to solve mismatching, duplications
THE decades-old problem of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) about mismatching and duplications in the delivery of support services, especially farm equipment to modernize agricultural production, will soon be solved with digitalization.
This was assured by DAR Secretary Conrado M. Estrella III with the start of operation of the Agrarian Information Resource Center.
To jump start its operation, Estrella issued ultra-portable, data-collecting devices to the field force to accelerate the DAR’s digitalization.
Estrella said the information network will gather, verify, validate and organize data about agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) to enable an effective assessment of impact of support services and to ensure strategic targeting of delivery of these services and to maximize the benefits for ARBs.
He underscored the DAR’s mandate to build an enhanced information network of ARBs, 5,290 Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organizations (ARBOs) and 2,252 Agrarian Reform Communities (ARCs) and their locations in 4.9 million hectares of awarded agrarian lands nationwide.
For the Project SPLIT (Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling), a foreign-assisted project by World Bank, the digitalization begins with the cleansing of Individual Land Distribution Folders (ILDF), specifically the veracity of the data contained therein such as the ARB’s names, their metes and boundaries, and the crops planted, among others, that are vital in the processing of lands subjected for parcelization.
Estrella further stressed that building the DAR Agrarian Information Resource Center would expedite the data collection and consolidation from the field with the use of handy laptops, equipped with industry grade features and technical specifications to accelerate the creation of DAR digitalization platforms and databases.
The move is in response to the directives of President Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos, Jr. for the entire government bureaucracy to digitize which includes sharing and integration of data.
For DAR and the Land Registration Authority (LRA), the utilization enhanced Citizen’s Land Registration Portal (CPRP) is being worked out in earnest, according to the mandate of Malacanang.
Estrella has also ordered the release to all DAR Regional and Provincial Offices of 400 Acer Extensa 15 laptops.
