The Land Transportation Office (LTO) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) will start issuing a digital version of driver’s licenses next month as the license card backlogs reached 234,149 as of May 2.
In a hearing of the House Committee on Transportation, DICT Undersecretary Dave Almirol said the LTO will be included in the eGov Super App that will be launched in June.
“Actually, we have MOU [memorandum of understanding] with DOTr and LTO to bring e-governance in terms of innovation and assist both agencies to implement the ease of doing business and bring innovative ways to do things . . . the LTO wants to [launch its digital license] with eGov Super App created by the DICT next month,” said Almirol.
“They [LTO] asked us instead of issuing a paper document [driver’s license receipt]–we suggested this [electronic version of driver’s license] because this is already being done in other countries. It took us more than a week to build it,” said Almirol.
For his part, LTO chief Jay Art Tugade said the advantage of the digital license is that motorists can present it to law enforcement officers during apprehension.
“It is equivalent to presenting the physical driver’s license but this is not a substitute for a physical card,” Tugade said.
He also said security measures of the digital license will be incorporated into the existing system of the physical version and the eGov Super App.
Backlogs
According to Tugade, LTO’s backlog in driver’s license cards has reached 234,149 as of May 2.
These backlogs were recorded nationwide.
Meanwhile, the LTO official said it will increase the number of driver’s license cards to be procured by having a one-year buffer based on yearly-projected number of transactions.
The LTO will also secure a multi-year contracting authority which may possibly need the President’s approval and separate the schedule of delivery of cards for the current year and the succeeding year.
According to DOTr Undersecretary Timothy John Batan, the latest opening of bids for the supply of license cards would be on May 24, 2023.
He said there are 7 prospective bidders to supply driver’s license cards.
Transportation Undersecretary Kim de Leon said the budget for the contract is at P240 million for 5.2 million driver’s license cards.
Earlier, Tugade said the decision of the DOTr to centralize all procurements with a budget of P50 million and above has resulted in the shortage of driver’s license cards.
DOTr Special Order 2023-024 issued last January 25 which stipulates that all procurement above P50 million should be done by the DOTr Central Office.
“When we received the internal policy in January, almost every week we sent a letter to the DoTr, requesting the department to reconsider the special order because we did not want to run out of plastic cards and license plates. Our requests were denied,” Tugade said.
Tugade said the LTO has extended the validity of expired driver’s licenses until October 31 to resolve the shortage of plastic cards.