GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 6 May) – The Department of Agriculture (DA) in Region 12 has adopted the use of geotagging technology to enhance the monitoring and implementation of its field projects.
Amalia Jayag-Datukan, DA Region 12 executive director, said Monday they are currently working on the region-wide rollout of the technology to facilitate its use by the agency’s project implementers, partners and local government units (LGUs).
She said they recently trained the focal persons of LGUs that are covered by the World Bank-assisted Mindanao Rural Development Program-Adaptable Program Loan Phase 2 (MRDP-2) for the pilot implementation of the technology in the area.
The training mainly focused on the use of geotagging in monitoring the status and progress of ongoing MRDP-2 projects within the region, she said.
Geotagging refers to the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites and short message service or text messages.
An online reference website said geotagging may help users find a wide variety of location-specific information like images taken near a given location by entering latitude and longitude coordinates into a suitable image search engine.
It said geotagging-enabled information services can be used to find location-based news, websites, or other resources and may tell users the location of the content of a given picture or other media.
The technology has gained popularity with the increased use of internet-capable and global positioning system or GPS-enabled mobile devices, it added.
“It will help us directly monitor the status of our projects in the field in a fast and efficient manner,” Datukan said.
The official said the use of the technology will help address problems on the duplication of projects that are implemented by the agency and their partners in the region.
The official said DA-12 is set to train more local project implementers in the region regarding the use of geotagging in preparation for the launching in the area in August of the Philippine Rural Development Program, which is the expanded version of the MRDP-2.
She added that DA central office, which was earlier commended by the World Bank for introducing such innovation, is currently promoting the adoption of geotagging for all its projects nationwide.