Parliament
Human error led to premature release of private-hire car lock-in policy: Amy Khor
A deployment error by IT vendor NCS led to the unintended early release of information on the new three-year lock-in period for business-owned private-hire cars, Senior Minister of State for Transport Amy Khor said in Parliament. The government decided to announce the policy ahead of schedule to ensure transparency during the ongoing COE bidding exercise.
SINGAPORE: A deployment error by IT system vendor NCS resulted in the unintended early release of information regarding a new three-year lock-in period for business-owned private-hire cars, Senior Minister of State for Transport Dr Amy Khor said in Parliament on Monday (3 Mar).
The mistake was due to human error, she clarified in response to a parliamentary question from Non-Constituency MP Hazel Poa, who had asked about the circumstances surrounding the premature disclosure and whether an investigation would be conducted.
Dr Khor explained that the Land Transport Authority (LTA) had originally planned to announce the policy change during the Ministry of Transport’s (MOT) Committee of Supply debate in March.
However, the error by NCS caused the message about the lock-in period to be revealed to some users ahead of schedule.
“When the Ministry of Transport and LTA found out on 18 February that the information had been prematurely released, we decided to make a public announcement the next morning,” said Dr Khor.
She noted that this decision was made to ensure fairness and transparency during the ongoing Certificate of Entitlement (COE) bidding exercise, which ran from 17 February to 19 February.
“We wanted to ensure fairness and transparency to all parties, and allow bidders sufficient time to decide whether to adjust their bids, before the bidding cycle closed at 4pm on 19 February.”
NCS has since taken corrective measures to prevent a recurrence, she added.
New Lock-In Rules for Private-Hire Cars
Under the new regulation, businesses that register or convert private-hire cars for chauffeured services must retain them for at least three years before they can be transferred or reclassified under a different vehicle category.
The policy aims to prevent premature conversion of such vehicles out of the chauffeured private-hire car scheme, ensuring a stable supply of vehicles for point-to-point services.
Dr Khor also noted that three other MPs, Ms Mariam Jaafar, Mr Dennis Tan, and Mr Yip Hon Weng—have filed further questions regarding the lock-in period.
These will be addressed in greater detail during the upcoming Committee of Supply debate, where MOT will provide further insights into its review of the point-to-point transport sector.
Preventing a Recurrence
In a supplementary question, Ms Poa asked Dr Khor what steps NCS had taken to prevent a recurrence of such errors and whether the earlier-than-planned implementation had impacted the execution of the policy.
Dr Khor reiterated that the deployment error occurred because the necessary programming lines that controlled when and to whom the lock-in period message would be displayed were not deployed properly.
As a result, some users performing vehicle transactions on the digital system saw the message prematurely.
“When this error was discovered, NCS took various steps to prevent its recurrence,” Dr Khor said.
“Firstly, they have implemented additional checks both before and after the code merging and deployment. They have also put in place a buddy system with a senior developer to review the work done.”
