Last August 2002, AsiaAllied Technologies (AAT) was appointed the lead MIS consultant for the P9 Billion, World-Bank Funded, FMA flagship poverty alleviation, KALAHI-CIDSS project of the Department of Social Welfare and Development

The 8-year, KALAHI-CIDSS --- or the KApit bisig LAan sa kaHIrapan: Comprehensive Integrated Delivery of Services: Kapangyarihan at Kaunlaran sa Barangay: Pagtulungan Natin --- is an improved, multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder, community-based poverty reduction project, targeting 5,152 barangays in 191 municpalities of 40 provinces where incidence of poverty is above 30%.

The KALAHI-CIDSS shall also cover some twenty urban poor barangays/communities. The participating urban poor communitites shall be selected from the urban centers of each region (14 regions) and Metro Manila.

The KALAHI MIS consultant is responsible for ensuring that the massive amounts of information on project implementation are captured, digitized, aggregated and disseminated to all key stakeholders especially the DSWD National Project Management Team in order to make timely project decisions.

A major challenge to the MIS component of the project is the fact that about 40% of the targeted municipalities have no access to the internet and no computers readily available. Asia Allied is thus designing an innovative and cutting-edge methodology which will enable DSWD personnel to use their cell phones to text-in project updates directly into the national database server of the DSWD. These text messages from the 191 municipalities nationwide will then be automatically aggregated, summarized and auto-emailed to the awaiting Project Management Officers.

The KALAHI project is set to offically launch on February 2003. [back...]