CALLS are mounting for the Land Transportation Office (LTO) to look for another information technology (IT) provider amid complaints of slow transactions for the application and renewal of driver’s licenses as well as the processing of vehicle registration.

Driver’s license applicants and several officials from the government’s land transportation agency aired their support for the change as LTO chief Assistant Secretary Teofilo Guadiz 3rd convened on Thursday the officials and representatives of Dermalog, the agency’s current IT provider, for a closed-door meeting.

Aside from the slow processing of documents, other issues discussed were the difficulty in seeking appointment dates and the dayslong completion of transactions through the Land Transportation Management System (LTMS).

The LTMS is part of the digital shift program of the national government. In 2018, LTO awarded the said IT project, through a Joint Venture Agreement, to Dermalog and three other local companies.

“We believe that the best course of action at this point is to sit down with Dermalog and its officials, IT personnel, and other concerned stakeholders, and discuss with the LTO their own concerns,” said Guadiz in a statement.

The meeting between the LTO and Dermalog is just a preliminary step to further discussions to improve public service.

The LTO initially received criticisms regarding the slow processing of vehicle registrations, as well as obtaining driver’s licenses.

“We cannot ignore the sentiments of the motoring public. Their complaints were duly noted, and we would like to assure them that we will seek immediate resolution to their complaints so that their experience when coming to the LTO will always be a pleasant one,” Guadiz said.

Prior to his meeting with Dermalog, the LTO chief slammed the Germany-based IT provider for the processing delays and the long lines in district offices, saying driver’s license renewals before usually only took up to two hours instead of the current five to six days.

“There’s a delay in the process; lines are getting long in district offices. So we have to address these problems and we have to revisit the IT provider,” said Guadiz. “I want to check and review the contract. I will ask them if they can deliver. If not, we would look for other IT providers.”

The Commission on Audit (CoA) earlier flagged the LTO for the “undue payment” given to Dermalog, despite the incomplete turnover of deliverables for the P3.19billion Road IT Infrastructure project.

In its 2021 Consolidated Annual Audit Report (CAAR) for the Department of Transportation (DoTr), the CoA said that LTO’s “acceptance of customized core applications with missing processes had caused undue payments to the vendor, which is disadvantageous to the government.”

These core applications include the Driver’s Licensing System (DLS) and the Motor Vehicle Inspection and Registration System (MVIRS), which were included in Component A of the said IT project also known as the LTMS.

According to CoA, the DLS and MVIRS have unresolved issues as of December 2021 and their functionalities and processes are not yet fully configured, which caused disruptions in the operations of various LTO sites.

In Quezon City Licensing Center, for example, the LTMS automatically rejects transactions of motorists 65 years old and above. It also has inadequate examination terminals to cater to the big volume of applicants.

A high-ranking LTO official who requested anonymity told The Manila Times that a strict bidding process must be conducted to find a more effective IT provider if Dermalog cannot deliver.

Some LTO officers also revealed that LTMS programs have been constantly experiencing glitches, affecting the turnaround time and credibility of the transactions. In some cases, the LTMS cannot even detect fake driver’s licenses and documents and cannot handle a client’s multiple transactions.

Meanwhile, Dermalog spokesman Nikki de Vega said the current LTMS has “proven to be faster by tests conducted by the LTO comparing LTMS to the previous system provided by Stradcom.”

“While under the previous system, Stradcom charged the public computer fees which resulted in billions of pesos of collections for the private company — under the new LTMS system, these are now free to the public,” de Vega said. Dermalog’s contract runs up to 2026. She argued that the cause of the problem was the delays in turnover of the legacy database from the old IT provider Stradcom, which forced the LTO personnel to correct manually the missing information that prolonged the process of transactions.