Digitalization to erase LTO corruption — Mendoza

Digitalization to erase LTO corruption — Mendoza | Daily Tribune

The Land Transportation Office on Sunday stressed that the aggressive digitalization being pushed by the agency will be an effective "antidote" to the proliferation of corruption in all the transactions of the agency.

LTO chief Assistant Secretary Atty. Vigor D. Mendoza II said that he has already been pushing the digitalization of all offices of the agency since he assumed the top post late July this year.

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 permit and driver's license, as well as the renewal of the driver's license.

"Our aggressive efforts are in line with the instruction of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to our Department of Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista to find ways to implement 100 percent digitalization for effective and efficient government service," Mendoza said.

"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 license since only 1 percent of the total registered vehicles in the country were done online.

For the driver's license, 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 license in the soonest possible time," Mendoza said.

He explained that the use of online platforms for government transactions is already inevitable with the fast-faced improvement and upgrades in digital technology.

Mendoza also stressed that he wants to take advantage of all these technological advancements since digitalization will be the new normal in the future, especially that 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 that is 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 and with help of our stakeholders and end-users, I am optimistic that we can do it in the soonest possible time," Mendoza said.