The National Community Driven Development Programme, known by its French acronym as PNDP has embarked on a training session for 21 councils across the north west region on the collection and management of data from the local people to ensure that projects identified in the various communities actually respond to the needs of the people.

This was during a one week training workshop under the theme “the use of pro-ADP package and the GPS” to collect, clean and store vital data for priority projects in local communities to be used for planning and carrying out developmental projects.

Speaking at the opening of the training that took place in Bambui from October 20 to 24 2014, the North West Regional Coordinator of the PNDP, Nkanjo Bruno Daniel said the objective of the workshop was to introduce a new software known as Pro-ADP to improve council management for planning and follow up on infrastructure.

He said that though it particularly targeted council development officers, council finance officers and secretaries general, it was also extended to include divisional delegates of economy planning and regional development, chiefs of local development, SDOs offices and others who are directly involved in the synchronization of collected data.

According to him, information collected at local level will be consolidated at divisional, regional and national levels. This means that through the use of the software, only projects selected by the ordinary people will be addressed.

Corroborating the Regional Coordinator, the Capacity Building Officer of PNDP for the North West, Kollo Pascal said the new software will also improve the management of council budgeting as well as use ICTs to manage these projects.

He said the selected council staff therefore will have to be refreshed on the updates on the software programmes for them to understand the links and how to access them. Thus trained participants, at the end of the workshop are expected to know how to install and use the Pro-ADP and the GPS in data collection and management.

In his opening remarks, the SDO for Mezam, Felix Nguele Nguele said his area of jurisdiction is privileged to host such a training seminar for all stakeholders in the council development process. He noted that this training comes one month after the training of council development officers, council finance officers and secretaries general on the decentralization process. He said 21 councils in the North West region were part of the exercise.

While thanking the organizers of the training, Felix Nguele Nguele said since 2010, PNDP has been assisting councils across the national territory through the putting in place of council development plans, feasibility studies, project elaboration, capacity building, all of which have had a positive impact on the lives of the local people.

He went on to note that the seminar is another opportunity to improve outputs of councils and their staff. The SDO concluded by congratulating PNDP for its regular training programme given that regular updates by councils is important to enhance productivity.

For one week, participants at the workshop brainstormed on preparation diagnosis, planning, mobilization of funds, programming, monitoring and evaluation, logic framework, presentation of tools in the follow up of planned actions, typology of resources, actors mobilization funding sources, contexts in the elaboration of council development plans, software desks, icons, menu and their functionalities, formulae in data collection, consultation of data production of inventory and collection forms, exportation and importation of data, protection and saving of data, definition and general information on the GPS functioning principles, the use of the GPS in data collection, transfer of data on Mapsource, visualization of points amongst several other important topics.