2. Background

The Investment Programming Division (IPD) of the Department of Agriculture (DA) is tasked to spearhead the formulation (and updating) of its Public Investment Program (PIP) and Three-Year Rolling Infrastructure Program (TRIP). The PIP and TRIP is a collection of priority programs and projects (PAPs) to be implemented by the Department in the medium term to achieve the targets of the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) and contribute to the attainment of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) is the primary agency responsible for the formulation and updating of the PIP and TRIP for all government agencies. It uses the Public Investment Program Online System (or PIPOL) to facilitate the submission of PAPs from mother agencies, and their corresponding attached agencies and attached corporations. Because of the complexity of the requirements per agency basis, the NEDA came up with a standard form for collecting data from agencies discarding information that are (1) uncommon and specific to (a) particular agency(ies), and (2) data that will not be used by the NEDA. Further, users who have access to the PIPOL System are limited to Central Offices and other identified major focal offices (i.e. attached agencies and attached corporations). Actual proponents are therefore not the ones directly inputting in the system but uses middlemen (e.g., planning and programming offices) to submit the inputs.

In order to bridge this gap, the IPD has sought to create its own version of the PIPOL System, the Public Investment Program System (or PIPS) to act as an internal database system to collect data from the different operating units of the DA. The PIPS imitates features of the PIPOL System with additional data and workflow to adapt to the needs of the DA.