March 20, 2018

As an important part of its transition activities, the PRISM Unit at PhilRice conducted a strategic and operational planning workshop on March 6-9, 2018 at PhilRice Bicol in Ligao City, Albay. All of its staff gathered and discussed strategies and action plans in its operationalization to provide a sense of direction for PRISM to continue serving its stakeholders.

Through this workshop, the PRISM Unit defined its main goals and objectives to focus for PRISM’s operation from 2018 to 2022.The team were presented first the historical background of PRISM, its current status and project assessments for the team to be guided in the process. The team drafted a strategic and operation plan with holistic strategies and action plans on the unit’s management, planning, operations and coordination. The drafted plan will be presented to the PRISM Management Team, PhilRice management and DA Operations for review and approval.

“Now that we have outlined our path, as a unit, we should orchestrate our activities, focus our energy, and do our works to strengthen PRISM operation toward common goals and objectives.” Said Mr. Jovino De Dios, PRISM Unit Head.

Meanwhile, the PRISM’s Field Operations Team also reviewed the updates on field protocols and smart-phone-based survey forms to enhance their technical capability on facilitating regional activities. New features of the PRISM Collect App, a repository of all forms used in field data collection, were introduced and tested.  Mr. De Dios highlighted the importance of the roles of the Regional Facilitators in the PRISM operations. The activities were carefully planned to make sure that the Regional Facilitators grasped the tasked given to them and put it into practice. Field testing of the PRISM Collect was conducted to identify problems, troubleshoot and ensure that all functions and forms are working properly before deployment to the regional implementers.

“The retooling helped me to review the field operations protocol, PRISM forms, online data management and smartphone applications that we are using.” Said Gerald Bello, PRISM facilitator based at PhilRice Negros station.

The workshop ended up to be productive. The team arrived with a draft of their strategic plans for 2018 to 2022.