Indra presents automated poll solutions in CAC forum

MANILA, Philippines - Indra, one of the leading multinational technology and consulting firms in Europe and Latin America, participated in the Automated Election System Forum, organized by the Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) last Sunday.

The forum, part of the 2014 National Science and Technology Week at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City, aimed to help the CAC give its recommendations on what technology to use for the local and national elections in 2016. Solution providers also demonstrated their technology in their respective booths in SMX.

Indra’s solutions focus on facilitating a smooth electoral process from start to finish, and to increase efficiencies in the polling stations, using state-of-the-art technologies.

One of the solutions presented by Indra is their electronic poll book (EPB) for easy identification and verification of voters. The EPB can identify and verify a voter using automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) or via scanning any type of ID.

These features ensure avoidance of electoral fraud, especially for cases of stolen identity or double-voting, and also speed up the voter identification stage, significantly reducing overall voting processing time.

The poll book is able to work without external power supply for more than 12 hours, and can be pre-loaded with the list of voters in a specific precinct, which allows the system to work with no connection to a central database.

For their voting system, Indra presented its own Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine. This machine collects votes via a touch screen with an enhanced graphic voting interface, wherein the list of candidates are presented in an easy and intuitive manner. This feature allows voters to pick their choices quickly and accurately, reducing voting time.

The tamper-proof voting machine encrypts votes, and digitally signs and securely transmits them to a central database for quick canvassing and proclamation of results.

The DRE voting machine, like the EPB, also has an internal battery, which allows it to work up to 14 hours without an external power supply. The DRE also has a built-in ballot printer which automatically prints the ballot upon confirmation of the voter’s selected candidates.

The ballot can also be printed by Indra’s own Ballot Printer and Counter. The integrated thermal printer produces secure ballot papers via a touch-screen interface, or a voting pad based on IR technology for a larger display of candidate names and pictures.

A QR code is printed in each ballot, which can be used by the same device when used as a ballot counter, resulting in a fast, error-free and auditable counting process in polling stations.

Indra’s experience comprises participation in more than 350 electoral processes, involving more than 3.5 billion voters, all over the world. It pioneered the use of new technologies and solutions such as electronic poll books, electronic voting, e-counting, Internet voting, and the use of IT applications and gadgets (such as PDAs) to facilitate polling stations.

Through the years, it has been involved in the election processes of countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Norway, Angola, Portugal, Italy, and the United States.

In the last 12 months, Indra successfully managed 20 electoral projects in 14 countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Spain, Libya, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia.

Indra is the only private company certified by the United Nations and the European Union in the electoral process services.

Present in the region since 1995, Indra in the Philippines is one of the leading technology solutions and services providers in the country and in Southeast Asia. The company employs almost 900 highly trained professionals and operates in highly dynamic markets such as energy and telecommunications, utilities and industry, financial services, public administration and healthcare, transport and traffic, and security and defense.

Indra is Spain’s leading consulting and technology multinational and one of the main multinationals in Europe and Latin America. Innovation and sustainability are the cornerstone of its business, having assigned over 570 million euros to R&D in the last three years, a figure that places it among the top European companies in its sector in terms of investment. Sixty-one percent of its approximate sales of three-billion euros, come from the international market. It has 42,000 employees and customers in over 138 countries.