Lemon

Among the major programs of the Bongbong Marcos administration is the digitalization of government services. This is crucial to keeping pace with our rapidly modernizing neighbors who are making great strides in building emerging information technology into their bureaucracies and frontline services.

If the exemplar of this digitalization program is the P3.14-billion Land Transportation Management System (LTMS), one will be hard-pressed to claim progress. The LTMS is Component A of the DOTr’s P8-billion Road IT Infrastructure Project.

This initial component remains incomplete 68 months after the deal was sealed. Government auditors have raised numerous red flags about how money for the project is being spent. Vehicle owners, the supposed beneficiaries of digitalization, are exasperated.

When one buys a car and later discovers it is riddled with defects, the item is described as a “lemon.” We have wasted six good years trying to get the LTMS running. Perhaps it is time to call this thing a “lemon.” While we grapple with the imperfections of this system, time and technology will pass us by.

The whopping P8-billion contract to modernize and fully digitalize the LTO was awarded to a consortium by what was then the DOTC in May 2018. This project seeks to replace the old IT system provided by Stradcom. The consortium is led by German IT firm Dermalog with joint venture partners Holy Family Printing Corp., Microgenesis and Verzontal Builders.

Since then, the project has been hounded by delays and glitches. Three congressional hearings have been held on the matter. For three years in a row, the Commission on Audit (COA) issued adverse observations regarding how money is spent and how the project is run.

Dermalog is asking for another extension of the project. This is on top of the 15 extensions it has already been granted.

 In its 2022 report, the COA pointed out that despite full payments already made to the contractor, the seven core applications of the LTMS suffered from 40 unresolved system issues. More than 90 functionalities were listed for enhancement as of end-2022.

The COA called out the LTO for wrongly paying the foreign IT contractor maintenance fees from