Spain: Indra To Undertake Technology Deployment For General Elections
The Spanish Ministry of Interior awarded Indra, the premier IT company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe, the technology deployment for the provisional scrutiny of the general elections to be held on November 20th.
With the general elections in mind, where over 35 million citizens are expected to vote, Indra will place at the Ministry of Interior’s disposal Indra’s state-of-the-art proprietary technology developed for this purpose as well as a team of over 1000 professionals.
The IT company will undertake the provisional scrutiny of nearly 60,000 polling stations distributed across over 23,000 polling places as well as the publication of the provisional results, will give support to the Electoral Commission for the definite count.
PDA and MAE solutions
Indra will use its technology solutions such as PDAs for automated data transmission and MAE to automate the tasks of the polling stations.
For the event, nearly 14,000 PDAs will be supplied to those municipalities with over 2,000 electors and to all municipalities of Madrid, Barcelona and Canary Islands. These devices expedite the scrutiny, increase the quality of the data to be transmitted by incorporating additional controls at the same polling place, eliminate repetitive tasks and automate transmission.
The electronically managed polling station system (MAE) provides polling station officers a series of computer tools to manage the tasks. It guarantees security of the scrutiny, expedites voter identification with an electronic ID card reader and fills out the reports almost automatically. MAE is a user-friendly system, does not require specific training and strictly complies with the Organic Law on the General Electoral System (LOREG). MAE has been employed during the elections to the European Parliament in 2009, to the Catalonian Parliament 2010 and in the last municipal and regional elections on May 22nd this year. On November 20th, almost 1 400 000 voters will be able to cast their vote with this system at nearly 2000 polling stations.
In total, including PDA and MAE, around 16,000 devices will be deployed to provide electronic coverage to 86% of the electoral census of the country, that is, over 30 million electors.
Expeditious publication of results
Results will be published by means of a multi channel communication platform in real time. Thanks to the website citizens, authorities and media professionals will have access to the results of the count as it develops. The scrutiny can also be followed up with mobile phones either by SMS or via internet.
Leadership in electoral processes
Indra has participated in more than 300 successful electoral processes worldwide involving more than 2.000 million voters and has been pioneer in the use of new technologies with solutions such as: Electronic Vote, e-Counting, Internet Voting, as well as solutions and services for citizen participation like the iPARTICIPA platform, and as an initiative of the Ministry of Interior, in the application of technology solutions to electoral management like PDAs or equipping polling stations with IT applications to facilitate and simply tasks.
During the last years, Indra has been involved in the election processes in countries such as UK, France, Slovenia, Portugal, Italy, United States, Argentina, and Angola among others, by offering all kinds of services and electoral solutions and implementing innovative Electronic vote systems. Besides this, it has thoroughly supported the recent elections to Catalonia and Galicia’s regional parliaments and to the European parliament, autonomous elections in Andalusia as well as to the legislative elections in Argentina or the Presidential elections in Colombia. Furthermore, Indra carried out the scrutiny and publication of results of the municipal elections in Spain held in May 22nd this year along with the elections of most of the autonomous regions on the same day.
Indra recently undertook the scrutiny of the Presidential elections in Argentina and was partially involved in the local elections of Colombia; both events took place in October. In September, the company carried out the scrutiny in the local elections and 15 district councils in Oslo, Norway, using its “e-counting” system.
Indra is a premier Information Technology Company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the second European company in its sector according to investment in R&D with nearly € 500 M during the last three years. In 2010 revenues reached € 2,557 M of which a 40% came from the international market. The company employs more than 31,000 professionals and has clients in more than 110 countries.