SERENE LUO finds out how it works.

Usually, fewer than 15,000 vehicle-related transactions are carried out daily at the Land Transport Authority, but that number jumped five-fold when its new portal went live on Feb 28.

In fact, on the first day e-Services@ONE.MOTORING was launched, a whopping 80,000 transactions were recorded, causing the system to crawl for some users who were trying to renew their road taxes or transfer vehicles.

The system's vendor, NCS, was called in to allocate more server space and by 12.30pm the same day, things were back to normal, despite the huge backlog of transaction requests.

Said NCS' chief executive, Dr Chong Yoke Sin, 49: "We had load tested it to three times the regular load, but despite that, we did not anticipate there to be five times the number of people wanting to use it on the first day."

That was just a first-day debacle, said LTA's chief information officer, Mrs Rosina Howe-Teo, 51.

The system has been well-received since then.

She said: "The number of transactions after office hours is very healthy, not just a trickle, and traffic monitoring shows that people are logging on almost 24 by seven."

About a fifth - or 12,000 - of the total number of transactions each day are carried out after office hours, she added.

She attributed the high traffic to the fact that people cruise around to "try out a lot more services", once they log on.

The most popular service: checking PARF and COE rebates, which gets more than 30,000 checks daily.

The same enquiry service, which used to be on www.ecitizen.gov.sg, got no more than 4,500 hits per day in the past.

Before the Vehicle Registration and Licensing System (VRLS) was put in place, only seven enquiry services were available at its website (www.onemotoring.com.sg).

Now, there are 34 services, of which 22 are for vehicle owners and 12 are for general enquiry areas.

And motor showrooms, insurance companies, finance houses and even scrapyards now linked together to access the LTA site.

Also, the data in the old systems used to lag at least one to two days behind, and "batch-processing" had to be done daily at the end of the day, to update them.

The previous 23-year-old vehicle and licensing system used Adabas and were integrated with other databases.

For the new VRLS, a new database was built and all vehicle-related information fully migrated over.

Agents can access the full range of e-services, as if they were at the counter of LTA, by visiting LTAlink - either via an Internet or a dedicated connection (by using SingTel's Mega@POP and a suitable router).

Drive safely

Motorists who want to purchase cars or carry out other transactions via agents need to get a transaction personal identification number from LTA - currently available from its Sin Ming Drive office.

Requests for this number to be mailed to them will soon be available online, said director of vehicle services Yeo Teck Guan, 41.

The PIN must be entered when a transaction is carried out at the agent's office and is good for a one-time use only.

Also, there are four levels of authentication: general usage, entering of vehicle number, entering of vehicle number with owner's identity card number, or logging in with the user's SingPass.

Agents also need to purchase authentication tokens from Netrust, said Mr Timo Wu, NCS' general manager.

"The tokens serve as an authentication mechanism to allow access to the system by genuine and authorised users, who must have the tokens physically plugged into the system before they can use the system," he said.