One example of a failed system in our organization is the 2023 version of the Electronic Operation Timbang Plus (eOPT Plus) tool. During the first quarter of every year, a program known as Operation Timbang Plus (OPT+) is done throughout the Philippines. In the OPT+ program, weight and height of all children 0-59 months old are measured in order to identify and locate the malnourished children, generate data for use in future nutrition action plans and measure the effectiveness of local nutrition programs. The eOPT tool is a nutritional status calculator that is used to record, consolidate, and summarize the results of OPT+. A new version of the eOPT tool is released every year, with minor updates, usually in the number of target population.
In 2023, the National Nutrition Council released a version of the eOPT tool with major updates. This new version requires data about the presence of bilateral pitting edema and disability of the child to be entered in the system. Previous versions of the eOPT tool determines the nutritional status of the child based on his/her age in months, while the 2023 version uses age in days which is more accurate. The new version of the tool was also able to generate graphs showing the prevalence of malnutrition in the community and completeness, accuracy and reliability scores for data quality check.
Although the eOPT tool 2023 version has a lot of useful features, the main reason it failed is because of the Operation and People Factor. The tool was rolled out to the end users too late and we are not informed beforehand about the upcoming major changes in the system. For example, in our region (Region IV-A CALABARZON), an orientation about the tool was done on March 6, 2023, during our general assembly. The period for the conduct of OPT+ is every January to March, so by the time we are informed about the new version of the tool, many were already done with data gathering and some areas were already finished with their OPT+ report. Since this new tool requires data about the presence of bilateral pitting edema and disability of the child, nutrition workers (many of whom were volunteers), have to go back to each child again, one by one, in order to complete the data required. The eOPT tool 2023 was met with a lot of negative feedbacks, especially those who have thousands of children and have already finished data gathering. Because of this, the use of the tool was postponed, and an eOPT tool similar to past versions was used instead.
