The Commission on Elections (Comelec) recently selected SysTest Labs of Colorado, USA to review and certify the source code of the Automated Election System pursuant to provisions of RA 9369 Sec. 9.

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. 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, categorically stating that the AES, including its hardware and software components, is operating properly, securely, and accurately, in accordance with the provisions of this Act based, among others, on the following documented results: 1. “xxx”; 2. The successful completion of audit on the accuracy, functionally and security controls of the AES software; 3. The successful completion of a source code review.”

The project will run for four (4) months to be completed not later than 10 Feb 2010, in accordance with the requirements as specified in RA 9369. # # #