The National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) and the World Bank-Institutional Development Fund (WB-IDF) launched on Wednesday the Tala ng Bayan Laban sa Kahirapan (People’s Anti-Poverty Database, or Talambayan), a database that consolidates all poverty-related datasets of government agencies.
NAPC Secretary Liza L. Maza described the platform as a significant step in advancing the understanding of poverty in the country, particularly its multidimensional nature.
“Talambayan allows us to assess poverty not just across its many dimensions, but at multiple levels, as well—national, regional and local—through evidence-based analysis,” Maza said. “This will benefit our work with the basic sectors in formulating antipoverty strategies that are more holistic and better-suited to each locality and evaluating government programs by the same standard.”
Talambayan was crafted to strengthen the mandate of NAPC to coordinate, monitor and evaluate the government’s antipoverty programs.
Through the Open Data for Poverty Monitoring Project Team, NAPC collected all poverty-related datasets, converted them into a single format, stitched and centralized these in a single data warehouse, thus, creating the Talambayan platform.
Through consolidated data and analytical tools, the platform can keep track of the success of antipoverty programs through statistical indicators and establish correlations and causal links between various factors and poverty incidence in many communities.
Talambayan project lead consultant James Miraflor said the platform makes use of data from the National Household Targeting System of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
In time, the team will integrate additional data from other agencies, like the Department of Interior and Local Government, Department of Budget and Management and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.
“You can say we are drawing the bigger picture of poverty, based on correlated data,” Miraflor said.
Talambayan is currently available only to government agencies and the NAPC basic sector representatives.
NAPC also plans to generate a publicly accessible database consistent with the need for transparency in antipoverty programs.
“This way, we can be truly sure that the information that we have accurately reflects the realities on the ground,” Maza said. “More important, this information should help not only the government, but all of the people, as we build the mass movement that we need in order to end poverty.”