Loading ...By Tom S. Noda
Computerworld Philippines
July 11, 2009
Now with a signed contract, election technology firm Smartmatic Corp. is gearing up to produce 82,000 voting machines in time for the May 2010 automated national elections, claiming it is prepared to produce up to 4,000 machines daily.
“We must start full speed. We will soon make the purchase orders (PO) for all the materials to produce the 82,000 voting machines. Our production line will probably start in September, and the delivery by batches might be from November to January (2010),” said Cesar Flores, project director of Smartmatic.
Flores said Smartmatic’s “contingency assembly process” is targeted at producing 2,000 up to 4,000 voting machines daily on a 24×7 basis.
“We can assemble 2,000 machines daily and if problem occurs, we can bring in our second assembly line and make 4,000 daily,” he said.
Smartmatic, a Netherlands-based IT firm, who put up a consortium with local IT supplier Total Information Management (TIM), successfully inked the Php7.2 billion poll automation contract project with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) last Friday.
As early as February this year, Smartmatic’s president Robert “Bob” Cook made calls for the immediate conduct of bidding on automated poll technologies to properly meet the number of productions for ordered machines since no technology firm produces excessive number of product machines.
EXTENDED ARM
Flores said the Smartmatic-TIM consortium upon signing the contract has transformed from an old IT vendor into an extended arm of the Comelec.
“We are now an extended arm of Comelec and no longer the vendor,” he said. “We will follow instructions from them and how we can process all their cases.”
The Smartmatic executive added they entered the project with Comelec “in good faith” and is now preparing to move into “full blast operations.”
He said the company’s project management team will soon schedule meetings with Comelec’s project control team.
“We will immediately meet to understand clearly our responsibility lines, realized our goals and deliverable lines in a short medium term,” Flores said.
Comelec chairman Jose Melo said on Friday that Smartmatic-TIM has signed the poll automation project contract “for joint several liability.”
FOR RENT ONLY
Meanwhile, Ferdinand Rafanan, chairman of the Comelec’s Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC), reiterated that the Php7.2 billion of the approved Php11.3 billion poll automation budget shall be used in “renting” only the voting machines.
The balance of about Php4 billion will then be used for training and deploying of some 480,000 public school teachers who will operate the machines in over 80,000 polling precincts in the Philippines. The training will take place from November 2009 to May 2010 with the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) certifying the trainees.
Rafanan said the terms of payment for the Php7.2 billion deal will be by letter of credit made periodically in about 13 milestones. And the full payment of the project will be after the May 2010 national elections.
RELIEF BREAK
Flores said last Friday’s awarding of the IT poll project contract served as big relief for all concerned parties – Comelec and the Smartmatic-TIM consortium.
“After three weeks, I can now get some sleep,” Flores said, recalling the controversies that Smartmatic-TIM went through, beginning with their split-up over the conflict on administration control of the poll automation project.
Caught in the middle, Comelec gave three days for the two firms to settle their dispute which they resolved last July 3 at Melo’s office. The latter confessed of taking the role of a marriage counselor between the two erring partners.
Yet a week later, just a day before the project’s contract signing last July 10, a group of lawyers claiming to be members of the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) slapped a case against Comelec at the Supreme Court (SC) accusing them of violating Republic Act 8436 or the poll automation law.
CCM asked the SC to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) for the project’s contract signing.
Lawyer Harry Roque Jr., of the Roque and Butuyan Law Offices, led 9 other CCM members in filing the case at the SC last Thursday. Some of the petitioners included lawyers Joel Butuyan, Romel Bagares, Allan Jones Lardizabal, and Gilbert Andres, all from the said law firm.
Melo said they pushed through with the awarding the contract last Friday in the absence of a TRO.
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Based on newspaper report on the project proposal of Smartmatic/TIM, the breakdown of 7.2 billion pesos are as follows: Php4.0 billion for the cost of leasing 82,200 PCOS counting machines (hardware), Php1.1 billion for the cost of software, and Php2.1 billion for the services.
I wonder if the cost of deploying 82,200 information technology technicians, amounting to more than Php600 million, is included in the services of the consortium. This particular item is different from the “cost of training and deploying of some 480,000 public school teachers who will operate the machines.”
Recently, a Smarmatic official said that they will only deploy 42,000 technicians. Should this be the case, the deployment of technical support personnel would be insufficient to the requirement of Comelec come Election Day. The terms and conditions of the project, as per terms of reference, stated that there should be a minimum of one technician for every voting/counting and data transmission centers. This on-site technical support shall be provided 1 week before and one week after Election Day.
Are we being shortchanged by the consortium?
Sir, have a nice mood. I would like ask some information about the qualified technician for this coming election, As a technician Sir How many days of servicing from the said day of trainings? and how much the allowance of each technician? Thank you very much!