Glitch not our fault, says license supplier

MANILA, Philippines—The supplier of driver’s licenses to the Land Transportation Office (LTO) has defended its changing of the cards’ design, which the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) cited as the reason for suspending license issuances last week.

Amalgamated Motors Philippines Inc. (Ampi) on Saturday likewise said the “glitch” in the issuance of driver’s licenses was caused by Internet connection problems.

“There was a migration from the old storage system to a new scalable storage system with a much bigger capacity. That partly caused the disruption,” explained Ampi spokesperson Melanie Cuevas in a statement.

Server upgrade

Cuevas said Ampi had upgraded to new IBM servers to store driver’s license data. The servers are located in a very secure primary site with an equally secure real-time remote backup, she added.

“In all, the glitch lasted only three hours… we apologize to the general public for the inconvenience,” Cuevas said.

Last week, LTO chief Virginia Torres ordered the suspension of driver’s license issuances following a system glitch that halted operations for several hours. Torres said the problem was in the sudden changing of the design of the licenses.

The LTO is an agency of the DOTC.

Cuevas, however, denied the glitch was caused by the design change. She said the new design was still being tested and would not be issued until it was approved by the DOTC.

Still in test phase

“Ampi has not yet officially started the printing of the new license cards. The new cards are still in the testing phase and still open to further revisions and modifications,” she said.

“Ampi will not issue the new license cards unless given the go signal by the LTO. Our personnel are at all the regional offices of the LTO. They only print licenses upon the direct instruction of LTO officers,” she said.

She also defended the new design, saying this would add to the security features of the licenses and make it harder to fake them, at no added cost to the drivers.

“The upgrade of security features will not increase the cost of the licenses. The only things that will increase are the security of their data and the security of the licenses themselves,” she said. “Soon, fake licenses will be a thing of the past, nothing but a fading image in the rear view mirror.”