LTO wants full takeover of LTMS from German contractor

Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief, Assistant Secretary Vigor Mendoza II has recently announced that the agency seeks the full takeover of the Land Transportation Management System (LTO’s IT system) from its German contractor, Dermalog.

This comes after reports that the LTO will fully integrate its old system from Stradcom to LTMS by the end of November 2023.

“Our IT experts are capable of operating and maintaining the system. In fact, it is our IT guys who were relentlessly doing the job of fixing the [LTMS] system so that it becomes user-friendly to our end users until eventually we can fully utilize the online platform,” said Mendoza.

For instance, the driver’s license issuance is now 100% under LTMS while the renewal of motor vehicle registration is now at 95% under the LTMS system from 70% when Mendoza assumed the top LTO post late July this year.

The focus right now, said Mendoza, is to further improve the registration of newly-registered units or NRUs which is currently at 60% under the LTMS system. The LTO is pushing for full digital transactions before the end of November this year.

Should a government takeover take place, Mendoza says that it will save millions and it would be easier to maintain the system vs having it maintained by a contractor.

“It will be much easier to maintain the system and the government will save a lot in terms of fixing the deficiencies found by DICT (Department of Information and Communications Technology) because we are moving towards 100% utilization of the computer system that the government already paid for more than PHP 3-billion,” said Mendoza.

In the latest assessment and evaluation done by DICT, it found that there are 14 deficiencies in the LTMS system, and 166 needed enhancements to further improve the system.

Mendoza adds that the government is more than capable of takeover, and it is the same reason why he created a Technical Working Group (TWG) – which is now in the final phase of review and assessment and full implementation in November.

On the issue that the LTO favoring the old and transaction fee-rich IT system from Stradcom, Mendoza belied the statement attributed to the representative of the Dermalog that LTO personnel have been resisting the use of LTMS.

“This is not true. I have personally witnessed what our frontline employees are doing so it is unfair to issue inaccurate statements like that,” said Mendoza.