By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
October 9, 2009

Shortly after a public uproar demanding the source codes of the optical scan machines to be used in the May 2010 elections, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced the selection of a US firm to review and certify the source code of the Automated Election System (AES).

Comelec on Thursday night reported that it has selected SysTest Labs of Colorado, USA to review and certify the source code of the AES, which is pursuant to provisions of RA 9369 Sec. 9, of the poll automation law.

The provision mandates Comelec to make public the source code, sharing it to interested political parties or groups once an AES technology is selected for implementation.

Members of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (Cenpeg) filed on Monday a petition in the Supreme Court (SC) asking it to compel Comelec to reveal the source codes of the precinct count optical scan machines for public scrutiny.

The petition for mandamus was filed on behalf of Cenpeg by lawyers Francisco Joaquin and Aquilino Pimentel III, with the latter serving as the petition’s lead counsel.

Signed by more than 80 personalities from the business, IT, academe, and religious sectors, Cenpeg issued its appeal last Oct. 3 to the SC with a copy delivered also to Comelec.

Citing the poll automation law, Cenpeg said the source code is the human-readable version of the computer programs that will be running on the the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines and board of canvasser computers on election day. It will reveal whether the voting and canvassing are done properly by the machines.

Cenpeg added it has gathered several IT experts, professionals, and academic scholars to review the election programs’ source codes.

Comelec said SysTest Labs beat three other system certification companies in a bidding which graded expertise and references, project approach and proposed resources, inclusive of the proposed statement of work. 

The stringent technical evaluation criteria were set by the Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) and Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC), the bodies which oversaw the bidding.

Other qualifications that were required of bidders included certification with the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and other certifications from international certification authorities on electoral exercises and information technology.

iBeta, another US-based system certification company, and SysTest scored highest in the technical evaluation which shortlisted them in the financial round of the bid, Comelec said.

The financial envelopes of the two companies were then opened before the Comelec en banc, the CAC, TEC and representatives of the Ombudsman and the Commission on Audit (COA) where SysTest was found to have the lower bid at P70.046M out of an approved budget of P75M.  iBeta quoted P73.355M.

In its technical proposal, SysTest laid out a multi-faceted approach to detail system integration and the functional testing artifacts for testing the AES in various load and stress situations. SysTest specified areas of review and validation which include security of public fading devices, telecommunications, error notification, associated recovery aspects, apart from auditing capabilities. 

Each module of the source code will be validated and verified following industry standards (US EAC VVSG 2005) and with logic that produces correct results and precludes malicious code.        

The bidding and awarding of the certification was conducted pursuant to RA 9369 Section 9, which mandates the Technical Evaluation Committee to “certify, through an established international certification entity to be chosen by the Commission from the recommendations of the Advisory Council, not later than three months before the date of the electoral exercises.

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