ABSTRACT
The Philippines Ministry of Human Settlements was created in June 1978 by Presidential Directive No. 1396. Human settlements planning in the Philippines is fundamentally the responsibility of local governments. One of the goals of the Ministry of Human Settlements has been to maintain a national information system for human settlements planning. In the years since the Data Bank was originally created, planners have begun to question these assumptions about the role of information in planning. The Data Bank is based on two sources of information — the national census and a periodic questionnaire to municipalities. Various outputs are generated from the Data Bank, including projections, maps and indicators. The Ministry has adopted the practice of supplying municipalities with standard projections of certain data for planning purposes. The Data Bank has been used as the source of “indicators” of the level of services available in different parts of the country.
