A four day consultative workshop started on Monday at the National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI) outside Lae, Morobe Province and the workshop is on how to use the Department of Implementation and Rural Development’s (DIRD) Bilum digital platform system. The Morobe provincial administration, Wau Waria and Lae district officials will be trained (hands on experiences) on how to enter real time data into the system. The newly created Wau Waria district in the Morobe Province will be the third district after Nuku and Wabag Districts in the country to use the Bilum Digital Platform to implement and report on its District Services Improvement Program (DSIP) funded projects and activities. The Member for Wau Waria Marsh Narewec, MP said he accepted the Department of Implementation and Rural Development’s (DIRD) Bilum digital platform system because it will greatly help his district to implement and report on its development programs in a timely manner. Narewec highlighted this during the official opening of DIRD’s Bilum Digital Platform system consultative awareness and readiness for the Morobe leg rollout program in Lae recently. Mr. Narewec said every province and district must be accountable to what they received in terms of provincial and district services improvement program (PSIP & DSIP) from the national government for development and basic service delivery to their people. “I’ll be the first district amongst the new established districts in the country to use this digital platform system because we have no legacy issues, my district is a newly created district in Morobe province, and I want to start fresh”. “I am proud of this system, and I commend DIRD for developing a digital system and want to be transparent in every aspect of project management and financial accountability.” He added that the system itself will keep reminding them of their progress in the district in terms of administration operations, providing real time data on health, education, law & order issues and most importantly infrastructure development. “We politicians are here for five years only and will be gone when our term of Parliament expires, however such permanent reporting and monitoring systems must be developed and established for the district and province to implement and report on the huge development grants frontloaded to sub-national.” Mr. Narewec, who is an information technology (IT) expert himself further challenged DIRD to also accommodate public investment program (PIP) funds (development grants) received from the National Government through the Department of National Planning & Monitoring into the Bilum digital platform system so that what district or province receive can be reported on and ensure there must be physical monitoring because there are huge development grants under PIP being given to provinces and districts. The Digital Platform is basically being developed to the DIRD’s specifications (username) as required by Administrative Guidelines and Financial Instruction of the 2019 and the Government of Papua New Guinea’s new Digital Transformation Policy 2021. This Digital Platform is a cloud - based management system to develop a fit-for-purpose system to enable effective coordination, management and reporting of the output and outcome of Service Improvement Program (PSIP & DSI2P) in the country. The main goal of this integrated Bilum Digital Platform is for “Strengthening Good Governance though digital innovation in partnership with all stakeholders”.