MANILA — The Land Transportation Office on Wednesday said its lack of full control over its Land Transportation Management System is keeping it from addressing system slowdowns and outages on its own.
It said this has meant that it has continued to experience service disruptions, which LTO Executive Director Martin Ontog said has been the agency's biggest challenge.
He said that since the LTO does not have access to the source code for the system, it cannot directly address the service issues and is "reduced to a mere user as of the moment."
He added: "Wala kaming magagawa dun (We cannot do anything about that) unless we get the source code."
SECURITY RISKS
He said LTO cannot know either if there are breaches or risks of breaches to the system.
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He said LTO has sent 13 demand letters to German technology firm Dermalog Identification Systems GmbH, for the turnover of the source code. The LTMS' developer has refused, citing pending claims for payment.
Ontog said Dermalog has to prove these claims to the Commission on Audit, adding turnover of the source code should not depend on that.
Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center Executive Director Renato Paraiso said government agencies need full control of their systems to secure critical data.
"Hindi po nila mache-check if there will be vulnerabilities, kung nahahack po ba sila, kung nakukuha ba 'yung data natin," he said.
(They will not be able to check if there will be vulnerabilities, or if they are being hacked, if the data has already been taken.)
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LTO Chief Markus Lacanilao said restoring stable services remains the agency's top priority.
He said he wants the problem resolved within the month so the LTO can move on to other pending issues.