Transition of Rice Crop Manager Advisory Service to the Philippines Department of Agriculture kicks off

The Philippines’ Department of Agriculture prepares to take the lead of the Rice Crop Manager (RCM) Advisory Service from IRRI, through the RCM Advisory Service Transition Workshop on July 24-25, 2019. Key stakeholders actively participated in strengthening inter-agency collaboration that is a vital component of the project “RCM Philippines Phase 3: Transition to Operational Sustainability for Research and Dissemination from IRRI to DA” which becomes official after 2021.

The overall project objective is to increase the capacity and institutional readiness for the integration and transition of RCM research, dissemination, operations and IT processes within the appropriate DA agencies towards full interoperability with other DA-funded projects with support from IRRI. In order to achieve this objective, project activities include system optimization of RCM Advisory Service; joint programming of IRRI and DA staff; and management of source codes and databases transfer from IRRI to DA in 2021. One of the first steps to do this is to get the commitment and buy-in of key stakeholders in this process.


Through the workshop, representatives from the Field Programs Operational Planning Division (FPOPD) under the DA-Field Operations Services, Information and Communications Technology Service (DA-ICTS) and the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) established a sense of ownership of the applications and databases of RCM Advisory Service. The RCM project team from IRRI outlined the entire operational framework and process flow involved in the operation and maintenance of RCM Advisory Service applications and databases, and facilitated the discussions among these key stakeholders to determine which agency will take on specific roles and responsibilities.

Participants agreed that DA-ICTS will be in charge of server hosting and back-end services for both applications and databases while PhilRice will take the lead on front-end system administration. DA-FOS was determined to take the lead role in policy- and decision-making for the applications and databases, as well as data ownership. “We at National Rice Program are happy that we now have better coordination and collaboration among FOS, ICTS, PhilRice, and IRRI on ICT platform for DA. Even during the initial meeting to update the RSBSA (Registry System for Basic Sector in Agriculture), we highly recommended to include RCM because we saw that its system is very useful. Let’s keep this cooperation as we move forward. I know that as long as we work together we can do this successfully,” remarked by Ms. Lorna L. Calda, Supervising Agriculturist and Assistant Chief of FPOPD.

Learn more about IRRI (www.irri.org) or follow us on social media and networks (all links down the right column).