The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) will formally open data-sharing partnerships to allow stakeholders’ access to the Listahanan 3 poverty database.
The National Household Targeting Office (NHTO) of the DSWD will be the main facilitator of the event as the agency holds the National Grand Launch at the Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria, Quezon City on Wednesday.
Listahanan is an information system for identifying who and where the poor households are nationwide, which can be used as a basis for targeting beneficiaries for social protection programs.
In 2019, the department began updating the Listahanan poverty database in line with Executive Order 867 series of 2010. After a series of validation, the third round of the nationwide household assessment was finalized and is now referred to as Listahanan 3.
For this third cycle updating of the poverty database, the department’s NHTO assessed 15,487,655 households nationwide. All households in the rural areas were assessed and households in pockets of poverty located in the urban areas were included.
Of the total households assessed for Listahanan 3, about 5.6 million were identified as poor. These poor households are those recommended to be possible recipients of appropriate programs/services of the government and other developmental organizations. They are not, however, automatically qualified as beneficiaries as they still have to be assessed based on program criteria.
The Listahanan 3 poverty database also provides other important information, which could help program developers and implementers. Based on the assessment, 36 in every 100 households are poor. Furthermore, 5.5 percent of the poor farmers in the country are already in their old age while five out of 10 Indigenous Peoples’ households are poor.
These are just some of the noteworthy information that have been identified through the Listahanan 3 household assessment.
With the Listahanan 3 poverty database validated, the DSWD has now deemed it ready for sharing with other national government agencies, local government units, and other organizations/stakeholders implementing social protection programs and services.
The DSWD said with the Listahanan 3 data, the resources and funds of the government and other organizations would be spent helping the rightful beneficiaries, leading to improvement in their lives.
Meanwhile, to protect the information of the households on the list and in compliance with the Data Privacy Act, the department provides access to the database based on strict data-sharing guidelines and through a formal partnership. (PNA)