Reducing crime
Belizean driver’s licenses used to be printed on paper and then laminated. As a result, officials in other countries often assumed that Belize licenses were fakes. Hyweb Technology introduced license numbers derived from national ID card numbers, and improved the licenses’ anti-counterfeiting features, in the hope that the cards could also function as IDs.
Prior to the program, branch offices of Belize’s Department of Transport did all their work on paper, and were unable to exchange information with other offices. Consequently, a driver who had committed a traffic violation could simply go to a different branch office and get a new license. Offices also had no way to check if applicants had unpaid fines.
Belize also struggled with criminals from neighboring nations bringing stolen vehicles across the Hondo River, which defines much of Belize’s international border, when water levels were low. The criminals would register the stolen vehicles in Belize, and then “launder” them by using their new titles to sell them to Belizeans. Hyweb helped address the issue by sharing Taiwan’s transportation oversight experience, mediating between departments as they negotiated shared processes, and then producing a system to meet those criteria.
Stan Ma, a senior manager at Hyweb Technology, says that because Hyweb had already created an import‡export review system for Belize and had maintained good relations with Rigel Brown, a Belizean customs examiner and system administrator who had been responsible for the earlier project, it was relatively easy to link the transportation and customs systems. Now that Belize’s Department of Transport can instantly check the import‡export information for any vehicle on the customs system, it can impound those of dubious origin, resolving the problem.
TaiwanICDF’s ICT program looks at public needs, and then builds easily operated systems to meet those needs. (courtesy of Hyweb Technology)