Mariano Marcos
State University

MMSU, PSA team up to train LGUs

By Ian Paul Villanueva

Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU) and the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) formalized a strategic partnership to strengthen the statistical capabilities of local government units (LGUs) in Ilocos Norte on Monday, March 2, through the signing of a memorandum of agreement (MOA).

The two institutions agreed to a long-term collaboration to support national and local capacity-building activities, which include trainings on basic statistics for participants from Ilocos Norte LGUs, among others. The pact has the ultimate objective of capacitating LGUs to interpret local data for optimized decision and policymaking.  

The agreement was reached in pursuance of Republic Act 11315, which mandates the PSA to institutionalize the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) as a tool for local planning, program implementation, and impact monitoring in partnership with state universities and colleges, among which is MMSU.
 

MMSU President Virgilio Julius P. Manzano, Jr., expressed the university’s commitment to fulfilling its end of the agreement, adding it is MMSU’s mandate after all to deliver high impact to the communities in the province and beyond the region.
 

“We commit to abide by and deliver our responsibilities under the memorandum of agreement. MMSU wants to be relevant also in this area, especially because it is one of our core mandates to deliver high-impact services to Ilokano communities,” he remarked.

Atty. Sheila O. De Guzman, Regional Director of the Regional Statistics Services Office I, represented the PSA and signed on its behalf. In her speech, she thanked MMSU and noted that while the basic statistics training course had been held last February, the partnership has not concluded, and the training is only the first of many such activities in the future.

“We would like to express our sincerest appreciation to MMSU for providing dedicated and highly capable resource persons who equipped LGU personnel with essential statistical skills for analyzing, summarizing, visualizing, and interpreting local data. Our LGUs have gained practical tools that will help them make more informed policy decisions for their constituents,” she said.

Under the MOA, the university is bound to lead lectures and hands-on sessions on basic statistics that will be participated in by identified LGU representatives. The lecturers will come from the university’s Mathematics Department under the MMSU College of Arts and Sciences.

The signing of the memorandum was witnessed by Mr. Renz Sanchez, OIC-Chief Statistical Specialist of the Provincial Statistics Office – Ilocos Norte, MMSU College of Arts and Sciences Dean Marlina Lino, and MMSU Department of Mathematics Chairperson Honeylou Farinas.