Identification of potential beneficiaries made easy with data sharing

TACLOBAN CITY – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) shared with 13 local government units in Eastern Visayas the database of poor families in the region.

Through a data-sharing agreement, the department turned over a soft copy of the database to local government units to guide them in selecting the recipients of social services, DSWD 8 (Eastern Visayas) information officer Jonalyndie Chua said in a phone interview Friday.

From May to December 2023, the DSWD shared the data with the province of Biliran and the towns of Burauen, Julita, Javier, Jaro, Dagami, Santa Fe, Calubian, Albuera, and Carigara in Leyte province.

In the first week of January, the DSWD turned over electronic copies to the towns of Abuyog, MacArthur, and San Miguel, all in Leyte province.

The database, tagged as Listahanan 3, was able to determine 365,086 poor households from the 848,662 total households assessed in the six provinces of the region.

“The DSWD regional office is open to data-sharing partnerships to allow stakeholders to gain access to the Listahanan 3 database in Eastern Visayas. With the use of scientific methods and standardized criteria in identifying who and where the poor are, the database serves as the data users' latest guide in identifying potential beneficiaries of their social protection programs and services,” Chua said.

She assured that the information in the Listahanan database is protected since it is only made available based on strict data-sharing guidelines and only through a memorandum of agreement between the DSWD and the requesting party in compliance with the Data Privacy Act of 2012.

The record came through the third phase of Listahanan or household assessment that began in 2019, which located and identified qualified beneficiaries of the poverty alleviation program of the government.

Listahanan is an information management system that establishes a database of poor households that will be used as a basis for identifying potential beneficiaries for different social protection programs and services nationwide. (PNA)