In recent years, the Philippines has pushed towards digitalization to help make processes more efficient. The most notable one is likely to be eGovPH, which is pegged to be an online one-stop-shop for anything government services-related. Many agencies have quickly followed suit to maximize the average PH citizen’s convenience and accessibility. However, there may be some cons to the speedy progress. A local advocacy group called Flag Maharlika has just revealed a critical weakness in our local PH driver’s license system.
The weakness is an unfortunate side effect of the lack of digital infrastructure we still have locally. To put it simply, the Land Transportation Office (LTO) tasked an international firm Dermalog to be one of the primary handlers of the country’s Driver’s License Inventory and Printing Application Modules.
This means it has full access to all private information and can print PH driver’s licenses of any holder anytime, from halfway across the globe. On top of that, this can be done without the LTO ever discovering that it was performed. Even when LTO staff want to do something as simple as transfer physical card inventory from one local district to another, a Dermalog employee based abroad (likely Malaysia or others within Asia) allegedly still has to be pinged and informed for it to go through.
This is admittedly a breach of safety, security, and privacy, on a national level.
Flag Maharlika has urged the NBI to look into Cybercrime and Illegal Access violations that led to this clear system failure. Also, another complaint has been sent to the NTC for data privacy breaches.
The Office of the Secretary General (OSG) is already petitioning for the cancellation of the contract with Dermalog. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.