Human error led to premature announcement of new policy on private-hire car ownership: Amy Khor

Human error by a team at the Land Transport Authority's (LTA's) information technology vendor NCS resulted in information on a new policy about private-hire car ownership being revealed weeks earlier than planned.

- Vanessa Paige Chelvan Correspondent

Senior Minister of State for Transport Amy Khor told Parliament on March 3 that NCS had made "a deployment error".

This caused information on a new three-year lock-in period before a private-hire car (PHC) can be sold to be revealed to some users of LTA's IT system, before a planned announcement in March during the debate on the Transport Ministry's budget in Parliament.

NCS had told The Straits Times that the information was mistakenly released on Feb 16.

Dr Khor said the lines of code that "controlled when this lock-in period message should be displayed and to which users" were not deployed. As a result, the information was released to users who were on the service to register transactions involving PHCs.

Dr Khor said this in response to questions from Non-Constituency MP Hazel Poa, who had asked about the circumstances that led to the unintended early release of the information. Ms Poa had also asked whether an investigation will be carried out, and whether any steps will be taken to prevent a similar error.