MANILA – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) expects the transmission of election results for next year’s national and local elections to be faster and more transparent.
According to Comelec chairman George Garcia, this will be made possible with Comelec’s contract on the Secure Electronic Transmission Services (SETs) to the joint venture of iOne Resources, Inc. and Ardent Networks, Inc.
Garcia added that they are eyeing to sign the contract with the joint venture on Thursday morning as iOne and Ardent have complied with the terms of reference set by the poll body.
“They complied with the terms of reference. But of course, a demo would be preferable to see end-to-end testing and also to see if their system is compatible with that of Miru System (the supplier of the automated counting machines for the 2025 polls,” he said.
The Comelec en banc, earlier this week, has approved the recommendation to award the contract to the joint venture of iOne and Ardent “after careful examination.”
Garcia also explained that the poll body will do away with the transparency server in the 2025 polls so the election results from the machines will be sent to the telecommunications companies.
“The joint venture of iOne and Ardent is contracted to provide the equipment to reconcile the data from the telecommunication companies before they are sent to the five citizens arms of the Comelec, the majority and minority parties, the municipal or city board of canvassers, and the poll body’s national server,” Garcia said.
“Because there will no longer be a transparency server, there will be no single entity that will control transparency. Now, there will be more sources of data from the precincts that we can compare. Because there will be no transparency server, we made the results more transparent because they can easily be compared,” he added.
Garcia further said that Comelec will set up a data center under this project and the election results that will be transmitted to the aforementioned entities will be mirrored by the Department of Information and Communications Technology./PN
