Daily Tribune
Land Transportation Office Chief Assistant Secretary Atty. Vigor D. Mendoza II on Sunday said that the aggressive digitalization effort he has been pushing since he assumed the top post in late July of this year is an effective antidote to the corruption in all the transactions in the agency.
Aside from the online transactions for registration and renewal of motor vehicle registration, Mendoza said they are now also working for the full digital mode in the application for student permits and driver's licenses, as well as the renewals.
"The thrust I am putting in the government is to digitalize most of our services to avoid face-to-face meetings and hopefully through that, we can eradicate all the possibilities of corruption," he added.
Mendoza earlier directed all LTO regional directors to maximize the information drive to inform the public of the existing digital transaction for registration and renewal of driver's licenses since only 1% of the total registered vehicles in the country were done online.
For the driver's licenses, Mendoza said they are now working double time to integrate the new IT system with the old IT system in order to avoid technical glitches that sometimes lead to disruption of LTO services.
"We are putting everything together or trying to put connectivity in place to make it seamless. This is already being done for motor vehicle registration, and hopefully we can do that on driver's licenses at the soonest possible time," said Mendoza.
Mendoza explained the use of online platforms for government transactions is already inevitable with the fast-paced improvement and upgrades in digital technology.
He said he wants to take advantage of all these technological advancements since digitalization will be the new normal in the future, especially since the younger generations of Filipinos are now the beneficiaries of the services being offered by the technology—from ordering food, booking transportation and accommodations to payment of goods and services.
On the part of the LTO, he said this will certainly have a big impact in addressing corruption usually caused by human intervention in the process of transactions.
"As far as the LTO is concerned, we look to technology as a solution in order to address fixers. Ito ang isa sa mga dahilan kung bakit agresibo ang pagsusulong ko nito and with the help of our stakeholders and end-users, I am optimistic that we can do it in the soonest possible time," said Mendoza.
