The Land Transportation Office (LTO) will sit down with the officials of its IT provider amid complaints of slow transactions for the application and renewal of driver’s license, as well as in the process of vehicle registration.

Newly-installed LTO chief Teofilo Guadiz III said they intend to discuss ways to improve the delivery of services for their clients amid various complaints that range from difficulty in seeking appointment dates and days-long completion of transactions through the Land Transportation Management System (LTMS).

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

“Our hope is that doing so, issues and other concerns can be ironed out and avoid or hopefully eliminate problems and other challenges that may arise in the delivery of public service,” he added.

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

The Commission on Audit (COA) flagged the LTO in the implementation of the LTMS on various issues that include delays in distribution of deliverables for the 24 pilot projects in 2018, and incomplete deliveries of core applications that include the Driver’s Licensing System (DLS) and the Motor Vehicle Inspection and Registration System (MVIRS), as well as unresolved issues on functionalities and processes which allegedly caused disruptions in the operations of various LTO sites.

Other issues raised by both LTO employees and their clients include rejection of transactions of all motorists aged 65 years old and above, has inadequate examination terminals to cater to the big volume of applicants, failure to detect fake driver’s licenses and documents and inability to handle a client’s multiple transactions.

Guadiz said the issues and other complaints will be the subject of the discussions.

“We believe that any unnecessary delays in providing services that the LTO is mandated to provide will always be detrimental to the public’s welfare and certainly this Office, and perhaps even Dermalog, does not want that to happen,” said Guadiz.

“It has always been this LTO’s intention to give the motoring public the best and quality services they so richly deserve, in the most timely, convenient, and cost-effective manner, and we will continue to abide by it,” he added.

Guadiz, however, clarified that the LTO has no intention to replace Dermalog as its IT systems provider “because doing so at this time will produce more problems instead of solutions.”