BANTAY GOBYERNO
Ike Señeres
As the saying goes,
“it is better late than never”. To extend the wisdom of that expression, we
could perhaps say that it is better to have a plan than not to have a plan at
all. Having said that however, what is the use of having a plan if it is no
good at all? To add to the saying that “there is only one way to find out”,
there is another saying that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. All
that said, I would say now that the only way to find out whether a plan is good
or not is to test it. Better than that, we should be simulating a plan instead
of just testing it, and the better the simulation would be to the real life
scenarios, the better it would be.
Maybe it’s
just a play of words, but to some extent it could be said that testing,
practising, exercising and simulating are all just synonymous words. In that
connection, I heard that SWAT units in some countries would simulate and
practice every day with actual scenarios, as if the real life situations are
already happening. I that that is a good idea, but what is even better than
that is to supplement the actual simulations with virtual versions. For sure,
these two options are not in conflict with each other and at best, they would
even complement each other. One good thing about virtual simulations is that
the actual data could be gathered and could eventually be analyzed.
I think that
it will still take a long time before “Internet of Things” (IOT) will be
mainstreamed into local governance, but it is a good time to start doing it
now, rather than never ever doing it. Not unless we start doing it, it could
take forever and sad to say, that forever might even translate into never.
However, I want to make it clear that IOT is not an island by itself, because
it is actually an archipelago of solutions that should work seamlessly with
each other, as i fit is a naturally formed ecosystem. As I see it, it should be
IOT that should gather the data that should go into Big Data. The latter would
however be useless not unless it is analyzed, and that is where data analytics.
In the end, the data should be processed into information that should go into a
dashboard, being all part of business intelligence.
The Local
Government Code (LGC) requires all Local Government Units (LGUs) to prepare and
submit a Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) that shall be initiated by its
Local Development Council (LDC) and approved by its Sanggunian. Towards
that goal, the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) has issued
guidelines as to how that should be done. According to the guidelines, the CDP
and the Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP) are distinct and separate, even if
these two are intimately related. The guidelines say that in the CDP,
“comprehensive” should mean that it covers all sectors, while in the CLUP; it
should mean that it should cover all the land areas in the municipality. Be
that as it may, I think that the common denominator between these two plans is
the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
For some
reason, the DILG has not prescribed the use of GIS software in the preparation
of the CDP.
Similarly, the Housing
and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) has made the use of GIS optional, meaning
that LGUs can use it if they want to. As a result, some LGUs are just using
paper mache to make relief maps that are not really very accurate, except that
it presents a visual picture of how the terrain looks like. Some other LGUs
have made flat maps on paper that are visually informative, but are not really
clearly accurate too. More often than not, the LGUs that are using analog means
would say that they could not afford the digital solutions provided by GIS, but
that is not really true because there are open source versions that are
available.
Maybe it is
too complicated to explain it, but the same GIS software that is use for hazard
mapping can also be used for tax mapping and so on and so forth, including of
course traffic mapping. In reality, all of these mapping requirements are
really just data sets that are just layers of one system. In other words, there
is really no need to fund one GIS project after another. By the way, GIS software
is great for simulations too. Perhaps the best use to justify the use of GIS in
CDP is that all sectors could have their own layers in the overall system. That
way, we will all know what goes where and why, and we could simulate the
effects of addition or subtraction in each layer.
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