Comelec advisory council: Award contract to remaining bidder

Use all legal means to implement automation

The advisory council to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has reiterated its earlier position to award the contract to a bidder found to have showed "sufficient compliance" with the technical requirements of the poll body for the automation of elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

The advisory council, led by the chairman of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), met Saturday to discuss its reaction to the poll body's earlier decision to set aside automation of the elections in ARMM after the latest bidder failed to comply with a number of mandatory technical requirements, and last weeks' plan by lawmakers to suspend the procurement act to help Comelec pursue automation.

The Comelec agreed Monday to proceed with automation in four of the six provinces of ARMM.

"With regard to the DRE component, we reiterate our comments in our letter dated 3 April 2008 that the sole bidder has demonstrated sufficient compliance for the Comelec to proceed with the awarding of the bid," the advisory council said in a resolution signed by majority of its members, a copy of which was obtained by INQUIRER.net.

"We have no objection to the Comelec's decision to expand the deployment of direct recording electronic (DRE) technology from two cities or municipalities to an entire province, but we still believe that scaling down the deployment of DRE technology will lessen the risk of a failed automation," the resolution added.

The council was referring to a decision of the Comelec to reject the bid made by Smartmatic Sahi joint venture after the latter failed to comply with several mandatory technical requirements set out in the request for proposal, which was drafted by the poll body in collaboration with the council.

The rejection of the bid follows the disqualification of a previous bid for non-eligibility, leaving no qualified bidders remaining for the automation project, which the Comelec considers a pilot for the automation of local and national elections in 2010.

According to Comelec resolution 8436 dated April 11, 2008, the Comelec en banc has adopted the recommendation of its Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) to reject the bid tendered by the joint venture.

According to the resolution, Smartmatic Sahi bidded for several components of the automated ARMM elections, namely the electronic voting system with integrated election management system; the secure electronic transmission system for election results; the consolidation and canvassing system; and the systems integration and over-all project management.

Meanwhile, the advisory council said that the Comelec should use whatever legal means to proceed with the procurement process for the optical-mark reader component of the ARMM poll automation.

The advisory council said it will continue providing advice and technical assistance to the Comelec with regard to the automation of elections starting with ARMM and eventually the 2010 elections.

The advisory council is the body of expert advisers created under Republic Act 9369 and given the task of recommending to the Comelec which technology to use for the automation of elections.

The advisory council has recommended the use of two technologies in the ARMM elections: direct recording electronic and optical-mark reader.

DRE uses a touch-screen or touch-pad technology for voting, while OMR requires voters to complete a paper-based ballot which is then fed into a specially designed machine, similar to a scanner.

The advisory council had recommended a six-month schedule for the deployment of the automated election system. This will also include training of voters and the users in Comelec, and "mock elections."

The Department of Budget and Management has allocated about P867 million for the automation of the elections in ARMM. By Erwin Oliva - INQUIRER.net