This afternoon and tomorrow, the COMELEC Advisory Council will be holding an Election Technology Exhibit slash Demo where various technology providers will have the opportunity to present – to the CAC and the Technical Evaluation Committee – the latest automated elections systems technologies available today. This event is expected to help the CAC develop its recommendation, to the COMELEC, on what technology to be used for the automation of the 2013 elections.
Under the Automation Law, the CAC is mandated to “recommend the most appropriate, secure, applicable and cost-effective technology to be applied in the [automated election system], in whole or in part, at that specific form in time.”
The CAC also invited observers from civil society, the academe, non-government electoral reform organizations, ICT professional organizations. as well as the public and private sectors. Unfortunately, attendance will be limited to a maximum of 100 participants. Through these participants, the CAC hopes to gain the knowledge and insight needed to effectively determine the appropriate technology for the AES.
It will be recalled that the 2010 elections was also preceded by a Vendor’s Fair which similarly gave the CAC then the chance to review the state of the elections solutions market.
The confirmed participants, and their schedule of presentation, are:
First day, 12 December 2011, 1:00-5:00 P.M.:
1. Avante
2. COMELEC CCS
3. ES&S
Second day, 13 December 2011, 9:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M.:
1. DVS Korea
2. Indra
3. Software Improvements Pty Ltd
4. Smartmatic
Incidentally, today is the birthday of Robert Noyce, the guy who co-created the microchip. The image is today’s Google Doodle which, I felt might be relevant to the topic of this post. Y’know. Because automation uses computers and …