The Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) ongoing digitalization of social protection delivery systems will further speed up the agency’s services to clients, a senior official of the DSWSD said on Thursday (December 12).
Asst. Secretary for External Assistance and Development Juan Carlo “JC” Marquez said the Beneficiary Fast, Innovative, Responsive, Service Transformation or BFIRST Project has already made significant accomplishments aligned with the digital transformation roadmap of the Department.
“The BFIRST project is a collaboration between the DSWD and the World Bank (WB) that seeks to strengthen the DSWD’s social protection delivery systems, making them more adaptive and efficient,” Asst. Secretary Marquez, who is also the agency’s co-spokesperson, told reporters during the DSWD’s Thursday Media Forum which is held weekly at the Central Office’s New Press Center.
Asst. Secretary Marquez said that the project has two components. The first component, which has been completed, is the support for the cash grants of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), the DSWD’s flagship anti-poverty program.
“The second component that we are now focusing on is the support to DSWD social protection delivery systems and project management,” the DSWD co-spokesperson pointed out.
Component two of the BFIRST project focuses on the enhancement of beneficiary experience; efficiency of business process and information systems; equity through an objective targeting mechanism; and, project management and citizen engagement.
Asst. Secretary Marquez told reporters that new information systems were already rolled out for pilot implementation under the BFIRST project.
The first, he said, is the establishment of the online grievance redress mechanism called the Integrated Grievance Redress Management System (IGRMS).
The IGRMS facilitates a more efficient monitoring and management of the resolution of complaints from beneficiaries and the general public regarding the DSWD programs and services, according to Asst. Secretary Marquez.
The DSWD’s National Household Targeting Office (NHTO) is now implementing the ‘i-Registro’, a dynamic social registry (DSR) or online registration tool with self-service registration and data authentication of potential beneficiaries.
The i-Registro also aims to expedite the process of updating the program profiles of existing beneficiaries.
Last July, the pilot implementation of the i-Registro was conducted in the municipalities of Pateros, Floridablanca in Pampanga, and Cordova in Cebu to update the beneficiary profiles of 4Ps households with pregnant and nursing women and those with children aged 0 to 2 years old. This is in preparation for next year’s implementation of the First 1,000 Days (F1KD) conditional cash for 4Ps beneficiaries.
By 2025, Asst. Secretary Marquez said that the i-Registro will further scale up to cover 235 local government units (LGUs) targeting areas with high incidents of stunting and malnutrition among children. (AKDL)
