BUTUAN CITY, Philippines – As part of President Aquino’s transparency program in all transactions and programs of governance in various agencies of the government, the 1st Regional Geographic Information System Center (RGISC) is set to be launched Tuesday.

The creation of RGISC is also expected to boost the full economic development in the Caraga Region, it was learned.

The launching of the 1st RGISC is expected to be participated in by all line agency officials of the government and leaders of the various local government units (LGUs) in the Caraga Region, spearheaded by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA).

The objective of the RGISC in this region is to encourage geographic data sharing and integration among government, private, and academic institutions.

It is also a tool for effective planning, decision-making, policy formulation, investment programming, and monitoring and evaluation for sustainable development of the region.

The RGISC will also continuously build and improve the NEDA-Caraga GIS Center in terms of hardware, software, technical skills and data capture (spatial and non-spatial).

Processing and integration of data from various databases on peace and development through GIS-generated maps will also be among the services of the RGISC.

After the launching on Tuesday, a signing of the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) by the governors, city mayors, directors of regional line agencies of the government, presidents of the state colleges and universities, and heads of higher education institutions on the operationalization of the Caraga Regional GIS Network (RGISN) of the Regional Development Council (RDC), will also
take place.

The Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) through the Korea Overseas Volunteers (KOVs) deployed to NEDA-Caraga, extended equipment assistance for the RGISC, particularly the 42” width HP Designjet 4020 plotter, 42” width Graphtec CS510 Pro scanner, HP Proliant ML110 G6 computer server, GeoXM 2008 Series Trimble GPS, and Garmin Colorado GPS. (Mike U. Crismundo)