Of NBI clearances and drivers’ licenses

Recently, tricycle drivers complained about a new requirement by the LTO to submit an NBI and police clearance in order to acquire a driver’s license.

The national tricycle drivers’ federation said that this is costly especially for applicants who live far from the centers where the NBI clearances are available. Moreover, it was not clear if convicted felons who have “paid their dues” will now be deprived of earning a living. The LTO has countered that this move only applies to new applicants for professional licenses and does not cover non-professional licenses. The LTO also said that they want to ensure some level of “quality” among professional drivers. 

I fully understand the public purpose behind the requirement of LTO, but the question should be asked: Should this information (criminal records) be a burden on the public, or should it be a burden of government? Should we continue to require the public to produce all these “requirements” or can government offices share this information among themselves in order to lessen the burden on the transacting public? 

To their credit, government has become better and better at providing information and documentation to the public.

Think about the current system of procuring your birth certificate online with the National Statistics Office with home delivery to boot. The NBI has also become much better in delivering clearances, setting up computer-linked stations in malls all over Metro Manila. In the judiciary, the concept of electronic courts, where the litigating public can be informed of their hearings through SMS, or look up the status of their cases in public kiosks, and be issued orders right after the hearings, will soon become the new normal. 

However, these are stand-alone systems set up by individual government offices to serve the general public. Fine and quite laudable.

Collaboration among departments

I believe we are now in the cusp of the next generation of information sharing among government offices. Consider the case of the LTO under the DOTC and the NBI under the DOJ and the police under the DILG. We can imagine a scenario where the criminal records database of the NBI and the PNP can be shared with the DOTC-LTO in order to ferret out the “bad eggs” but also, to ensure that those who do not have any criminal record at all will get their licenses pronto. There would be no need for an applicant from Sanchez Mira to travel all the way to Tuguegarao to get an NBI clearance. 

But this would require collaboration and data sharing across departments, with the necessary security protocols, inter-connectivity issues, and file sharing arrangements. Difficult? Yes. Doable? Very. If there is one positive outcome that the Internet age has given to us, it is the beauty of information sharing.

If we can search and look up and connect with our friends from graduate school scattered all over the globe through Facebook, there is absolutely no reason why the LTO should not be able to determine whether an applicant has a criminal record even without even asking him or her. 

Another area where inter-departmental sharing of information is crucial is the processing of retirement benefits. I have a client from Pangasinan whose husband has retired as a police officer in 1982 and has already died, but has not yet secured his retirement benefits. In the checklist provided to me by my client, two items stood out: service record and death certificate. Fine, these are needed to process retirement claims. The service record could be found in the Personnel Department of the PNP. The death certificate could be found in the files of the NSO. Is there a way where these files could be digitized, consolidated in a Retirement Dossier per employee, and shared in a database to which the GSIS or the SSS can have access to? Difficult? Yes. Impossible? I say, Hell No. Desirable? Absolutely. 

Imagine a judge who is trying a case for illegal possession of firearms. If s/he can determine online whether the firearm in question is registered or not, then such fact can be admitted by the parties and thus shorten the case. If an immigration officer has access to court records, s/he can determine at port of departure whether a Hold Departure Order issued in 2010 has already been invalidated by the dismissal of the case and the acquittal of the passenger in 2012, without going through the embarrassment of denying boarding to the passenger, offloading his bag, and asking him to come back and get a dismissal order from the Sandiganbayan (by the way, this case happened to me personally). 

Another interesting snippet. Did you know that the Australian Embassy routinely issues visas through email? No going back, no courier fees, no sequestration of passport for a week. You can pick up your email anywhere in the world…now THAT is customer service. – Rappler.com

Hector D. Soliman is a public interest lawyer and a judicial reform advocate. He is a member of UP Law 1980 and Harvard Kennedy School MPA 1998. Feedback can be sent to solimanhector@gmail.com.