Development Entrepreneurs

C ENROs receive free patent applications only when supporting documents are complete. Record Officers then assign a unique Application Number to the application. They use this Application Number in creating a record for the application in the PLA LAMS  information system (Public Land Application Land Administration Management System). This record, which can’t be deleted, stands as proof that the application has been accepted by the CENRO.  CENRO has 120 days to act on the application. When the PENRO receives the CENRO’s endorsement, he has up to five days to approve or disapprove the application. Because DENR managers can view the application’s record, they can monitor its progress. So once an application has been recorded in LAMS, it has a permanent record, it has to be acted upon by CENRO and PENRO officials, it has a prescribed duration for processing, and it’s status can be monitored. This is not the case with the “pre-application phase”.  This phas...

I n a recent meeting my colleagues in development reform noted that many ODA-supported projects are either planning to go to Bohol or already there. Some were wondering, when would Bohol reach a point where it would not need ODA technical assistance anymore? I think they’re missing the point. It’s not that Bohol needs ODA, although they clearly benefit from it. I suspect it’s the other way around - ODA projects need, or at least prefer, to be in Bohol. Bohol’s got a lot going for it. There’s an interesting rural-urban mix. Beaches and resorts. Interesting spots. Cooperation among different political parties, after election. And a dynamic Governor. But you can also find these in other places.  What makes Bohol different and attracts ODA are local officials who can carry out the Governor’s decisions and agreements with partners. From Department Heads to front-line workers, Bohol Provincial Government has a deep bench of employees who are both technically competent ...

E ver notice how some development project videos are like obituaries? They follow the same story line in project completion reports and biographies. This is how we got started, this is how we grew, lookit the amazing things we did, here are the fun people we lived and worked with, now we’re closing down our project and this video is one way we’ll remember a project/life well done/well lived. Seems like all projects these days have money for “production of CIE material”.  These materials do communicate  - they communicate the fact that a project was done. After I watched one of these videos I got this “so what?” feeling. So what if you guys helped to plant x million trees, or got Congress to pass another law? Good for you, I guess. What does it matter to me? Somebody recently got me involved in making one of these videos. The first thing I asked was, “what for?” What do we want to accomplish with this video, other than tell whoever cares to listen that we’ve done this ...

I n the first two weeks of May this year I worked with drone experts Matt Cua and the father-and-son team of Walter and Oliver Volkmann to demonstrate the accuracy of drones as survey instrument. Matt Cua is one of the hottest tech start-up guys in the Philippines today. He has linked his company, SkyEye, with a network of universities and colleges, tapping their expertise to use the imagery produced by his drones.  Walter and Oliver Volkmann's outfit, MicroAerial, is based in Florida. Walter is a professional surveyor. Oliver is the drone and GPS expert. Together they have used drones to survey properties in several places around the world. We wanted to demonstrate that drone survey data can be as accurate as Total Station measurements.  I think we were fairly successful; our experiments showed a difference of only about 5 cm between drone and TS measurements. We’re now working for the adoption of a formal policy recognizing drones as one more survey instrume...

T he Business Dictionary (http://www.businessdictionary.com) defines a Service as “A valuable action, deed, or effort performed to satisfy a need or to fulfill a demand”.  Social, economic and political institutions were established to perform actions to satisfy needs; in other words, to provide services. Failure to provide services effectively leads to undesired conditions (e.g., malnutrition, inefficient industries, low rate of land titling) which attract the attention of Development Reformists. It does not take much for a Development Reformists to know that something is broken somewhere, and needs to be fixed. It takes much effort to find out exactly what is broken, how it is broken, and how it can be fixed. The answers to these questions comprise a set of possible Development Reform agendas, which can be filtered further by the twin lenses of technical soundness and political feasibility. Is there a systematic way to generate ideas for reform? This blog suggests that s...

I t’s been about five years since DENR issued a policy promoting partnership with local governments for titling. We are now faced with the eventual assessment question, “Have partnerships with local governments contributed to public land titling?” From what we know about DENR-LGU partnerships, the answer is definitely yes. The difficulty is in putting a number behind that “yes”, as the follow-up question is usually, “So how many titles have local governments helped to issue?” There are many ways by which local governments contribute to titling. Some of these ways provide an easy way to count specific titles produced with their help.  Some forms of local government contribution to titling are indirect and do not readily yield specific numbers. The simplest case of local governments contributing to public land titling is when they conduct communication, information and education activities to tell their constituents about RA 10023 and the relatively faster, easier, and i...

“D o we want to include the RLTA module or not?” I was in an energetic discussion with my boss and our Application Development partner, debating on the modules to include in an information system for public land titling. For lack of a better name we’re calling our system the “Online Adjudication Kit”, as it’s intended to help adjudicators with their work. (Adjudicators are the DENR and local government officials who help lot occupants determine their claim to a land title, and provide advise on how they can apply for one). A few weeks back we had elicited requirements from users and their officials at the National, Regional, Provincial, CENRO and local government levels. They told what they wanted to see in the system, how they wanted it to use it, how it could help them.  They asked for two things: a module that can be used to record data during field work, and another module to for Rapid Land Tenure Appraisal. Our key informants come from a Region that is very famili...

“ K uya, tam-is kaayo ni ” (“Elder brother, these are sweet”), the kid pitched a bunch of mangoes as soon as the car stopped at the intersection. He must have been about eleven years old, thin, in porontong shorts, a Lakers shirt, and a salesman’s smile. Of course I bought the mangoes.  As I drove away I saw him scamper off around a corner, no doubt to get another bunch of mangoes. I wondered why he didn’t keep his stocks nearer, so he wouldn’t have to run back and forth. That led me to think of other puzzling things.  Like, why do many MRT and LRT commuters pay just enough for one trip, when they could get a Stored Value Card? When you have to stand in a long line, endure the heat and get delayed, it seems to make more sense to get a card that can be used for several trips. Why does a pan handler persist in begging, when all he has to show for a day’s effort are a few coins in his can? Why does DPWH break up what seems like a perfectly good concrete road, ...