Mendoza: Digital shift in all LTO transactions antidote to corruption
The full digitalization in all the transactions in the Land Transportation Office (LTO) is the best antidote to corruption, the agency’s chief Vigor Mendoza II said on Sunday, Oct. 22.
“The thrust I am putting in to 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,” said Mendoza.
“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,” he added.
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.
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% of the total registered vehicles in the country were done online.
For the driver’s license, Mendoza said they are now working double 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.
Mendoza explained that the use of online platform for government transactions is already inevitable with the fast-faced 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 that the younger generations of Filipinos are now the beneficiaries of the services being offered by the technology—from ordering food, booking transportation and accomodations to payment of goods and services.
On the part of the LTO, he said this will certainly have 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 technology as a solution in order to address fixers,” said Mendoza.