YPS

Disclaimer!

While I am a full supporter of automation I still believe that there is much to be done on the COMELEC and SMARTMATIC side to make this election credible on both the process and the automation aspects.

I am also worried about the possibility of a failure in elections. But I would rather approach the problem from a solution building one rather than an adversarial one.

Ok Game!

As an IT practitioner and a member of www.youthvotephilippines.com I’ve been following the discussions about the automated counting procedure with much interest.

I’m wondering though…If the Comelec is really determined to implement this system…And the contrarian experts claim know what the fail points are…Shouldn’t we be lobbying to help them fix it? From my understanding of the issues many of the “faults” are procedural in nature and can be “fixed” under the broad powers of the Comelec.

Automation also cannot be dealt with purely as an issue of trust because if it were then any election counting, whether manual or electronic, will be seen as flawed. And if we begin to follow the argument of trust as an issue for preventing an automated count then are we unintentionally asking for the postponement of election while we round up a more trusted set of commissioners?

IS there any possibility of convening a consultative group that will help fix the current system instead of pushing their another system manual or otherwise? WILL THE COMELEC BE OPEN TO IT?

On the money side ( being the curious George that I am) and without getting into the contract details, lets take the 7.2 billion peso total bid fee and see what we get for our money.

Lets divide it by 90,000 precincts ( I know its 80 thousand plus plus pero para mas madali yung math).

That comes out to 80,000.00 pesos precinct.

If you look a the logistics planning time of ten months then that comes out to about 8,000.00 a month.

This includes hardware, software, logistics, security, coordination, admin, pre event activities, manpower coordination, support services, systems integration, etc etc. all over a period of 10 months.

To contextualize…There was a project I did that required the one week training of 300 people in three sites nationwide. I used two IT professionals per site. It cost me 150,000 pesos per site just for mobilization and logistics. That’s about 13billion if I did that for 90 thousand locations and I only had to coordinate location and PC rentals.

Lets look at the bid amount from the point of view of “number of customers served”.

That’s 7.2 billion divided by 30 million voters.

That’s 240 pesos a person.

If you look at the time cost it will take you to prepare to serve these people ( 10 months) then that comes out to 24 pesos a month per person. Still sounds ok right?

To contextualize…it is reported that a senatorial candidate in 2007 spent 5 BILLION pesos in ad spend and all manners of logistics to get himself elected. Senators have to go nationwide but do not necessarily cover 100% of all voting precincts. The logistics to run the actual election should be significantly greater.

And again contract contents aside, its now up to them SMARTMATIC AND COMELEC to deliver.

Just my 2 cents on a hungry Wednesday morning.